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WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



AN ATTEMPT TO ANSWER THE QUESTION, IN THE LIGHT 

OF THE BEST SCHOLARSHIP, AND IN THE MOST 

REVERENT AND CATHOLIC SPIRIT^ 



i 

By J. T. SUNDERLAND. 




NEW YORK : 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

182 Fifth A v. 
1878. 



.5* 



Copyright 

1878 

By G. P. Putnam's Sons 



" The Bible is a record of truths and observances, of ways of life 
and ways of worship, handed down from age to age, moulded by each 
in turn, growing fuller and richer by time." 

Dr. Temple, Bishop of Exeter. 

" The word unto the prophets spoken 
Was writ on tables yet unbroken ; 
The word by seers or sibyls told, 
In groves of oak or fanes of gold, 
Still floats upon the morning wind, 
Still whispers to the willing mind. 
One accent of the Holy Ghost 
The heedless world hath never lost." 

Emerson. 

The two indispensable conditions of a nobler and truer theology for 
the time to come, are, first, a thoroughly honest use of learning — a deter- 
mination never to ignore or evade whatever criticism history or science 
demonstrates to be fact, however it may upset our preconceived notions 
or unsettle our traditional belief ; and, secondly, to cultivate with the 
utmost veneration and tenderness that spiritual element of our being 
which brings us into living communion with God, and which, though 
wonderfully nourished and strengthened by the teachings of Scripture, 
flows from the same divine source, and is only another working of one 
and the self -same Spirit which uttered Scripture itself. 

John James Tayler. 



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PREFACE. 

A Book which finds a place not only in every 
church, but in every humble home, and which is 
more highly and more generally prized than any other 
book in Christendom, and justly so, because it stands 
at the fountain head of our religion and of much that 
is best in our civilization, is certainly a book about 
which we may suppose that all desire to be intelligent ; 
— and intelligent, not only in the small and meagre 
way of knowing by heart a good many texts that it 
contains, but also in the larger and more worthy way, of 
understanding the book as a whole — whence it came, 
how it came, from whom it came, under what circum- 
stances it came, what it is, what relation it bears, if 
any, to other great Sacred Books of the race. 

Upon all of these subjects a great deal of new and 
very valuable light has been poured by recent scholar- 
ship, particularly the scholarship of Germany, Holland 
and England. But as yet this light is shut up for the 
most part in numerous large and expensive works, a 
considerable portion of them in a foreign language, 
and either not yet translated or else translated but very 
recently, and in such form as to be accessible only 

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6 PREFACE. 

to scholars. It is exceedingly difficult, if not quite im- 
possible, to find any treatment of these subjects that 
is at once brief, clear, comprehensive, unvvarped by 
theological bias, and in any true sense abreast with 
the learning and best thought of the time. 

For those who have access to the larger and more 
elaborate works, and have leisure and inclination to 
read them, this little book is not primarily designed. 
To such its chief value, if it has any value, will be as 
a sort of review or condensation, of knowledge which 
they perhaps have already gained by the expenditure of 
much time and labor. But the present age is one in 
which there are so many things to be done and so much 
to be known, that few persons can take time to go to 
original sources or to wade through exhaustive trea- 
tises. The majority must have information brought to 
them in a concise, sharp form. To take a single step 
in the direction of supplying such information, con- 
cerning a book which men read more and yet really 
know less about, than they know about almost any 
other book, is the aim of the following pages. I 
ought, perhaps, to add a word as to the origin of the 
present volume, at least in the form it now assumes. 

Early in the autumn of 1877, I published a 
little book, about one-third or one-half as large as 
the present volume, bearing the title — " The Bible: 
What is it ? " In less than six weeks the edition 
(1000 copies) was exhausted ; although it was not 



PREFACE. 7 

advertised, and was put upon the market only in 
Chicago and a few small towns outside. Since that 
time the demand for the book has been constant, not 
only from the particular localities where it was for a 
few weeks on sale, but from distant parts of the country 
where stray copies of it chanced to go. In response 
to this demand (which I have been unable to supply 
because the book was not stereotyped) and in deference 
to requests from many friends in my own city and at 
a distance, whose judgments I cannot but respect, 
who have assured me that the book meets a real want 
of the time, I have prepared this new edition, — re- 
written, embracing a discussion of many important 
points not touched in the other, and containing quite 
copious Notes and References for the benefit of any 
readers who may desire to know more fully the grounds 
for statements made and conclusions drawn, or who 
may wish to pursue further their investigation of 
subjects or points here treated too briefly. 

J. T. S. 

Chicago, III., 1878. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. — Origin and growth of the various great Sacred 
Books or Bibles of the world. Sacred Books natural and 
necessary products of the human mind. Analogies between 
the historical development of our own and other great Sacred 
Books. Religion a larger and richer thing than Jew, Christian 
or Pagan has understood pp. 13- 40 

CHAPTER II. — A more particular account of the origin and 
growth of our own Bible ; the men who wrote it; the time 
when they wrote it ; how they came to write it ; its rela- 
tion to the times and the race that produced it ; its pro- 
gressive character ; the changes that have taken place in 
it in the various ages ; how it came to be elevated to the 
rank of sacredness. The Apocryphal and the lost books 
of the Old Testament ; the Apocryphal books of the New 
Testament ; the value of these, and their relation to the 
Bible. The formation and final settlement of the Scripture 
Canon pp. 43-93 

CHAPTER III.— Theory of Infallibility of our Bible ; bearing of 
the preceding facts upon it ; additional difficulties in the way 
of the theory ; difficulties seriously increase with the growth 
of science and scholarship. " Harmonizing " the Bible with 
Science. Are there contradictions in the Bible ? Does the 
Bible contain immoral teachings, or representations of God 
that are degrading ? Views of the Bible that drive men 
away from religion. Something better for the Bible than the 

Infallibility theory pp. 97-133 

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x CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IV.— What is Inspiration? What is Revelation? 
Both too large to be confined to any one age or any one 
book. Did morals and religion spring from the Bible ? or, 
did the Bible spring from morals and religion ? The criterion 
of truth. The Bible as a classic. The Bible and modern 
civilization. The Bible as a history of Religious Evolution. 
The Bible as the parent of Monotheism. The Bible as a 
book of moral and spiritual teaching and incitement. Separ- 
ating dross from gold. Who are the real friends and who 
the real enemies of the Bible ? pp. 137-161 

APPENDIX. — A list of works that may be read or consulted 
with profit, by persons desirous to get a more full knowledge 
of the subjects treated in this book pp. 163-179 

INDEX pp. 181-189 



CHAPTER I. 

ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE GREAT SACRED BOOKS 
OR BIBLES OF THE WORLD. 



(") 



w Prophets who have been since the world began." 

Saint Luke. 

" In every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness 
is accepted with him." 

Saint Peter. 

" Our own religion takes a place not distinct from, but among, all 
religions, past or present. Its relation to them, is not that they are 
earth born, while it alone is divine, but it is the relation of one mem- 
ber of a family to other members, who * are all brothers, having one 
work, one hope and one All-Father.' " 

Edward Clodd. 

" Every race above the savage has its Bible. Each of the great 
religions of mankind has its Bible. These books contain the highest 
and deepest thoughts respecting man's relations with the Infinite above 
him, with his fellows around, and with the mystery of his own inward 
being. In them are found the purest expressions of faith and hope, 
the finest aspirations after truth, the sweetest sentiments of confidence 
and trust, hymns of praise, proverbs of wisdom, readings of the moral 
law, interpretations of Providence, studies in the workings of destiny, 
rules for worship, directions for piety, prayers, prophesies, sketches of 
saintly character, narratives of holy lives, lessons in devoutness, 
humility, patience and charity." 

O. B. Frothingham. 



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CHAPTER I. 

Origin and Growth of the Great Sacred Books 
or Bibles of the World. 

The Bible as a Sacred Book. To the question, 
What is our Bible ? scholarship makes, among others, 
this broad answer : It is one of the Sacred Books of 
the world ; or, in other words, it is one of the six or 
eight great Bibles of mankind. The verdict is well 
nigh or quite unanimous that, taken all in all, it is 
decidedly superior to any of the others. But, however 
much it may tower above the rest, it is clearly one of 
a catalogue that includes them as well as it. 

What are the other great Bibles of mankind ? 
They are 

i. The Vedas of the Brahmans ; 

2. The Tripitaka of the Buddhists ; 

3. The Zend Avesta of the Parsees or Persians ; 

4. The Chinese Sacred Books of Confucius ; 

5. The Chinese Sacred Book of Laou-tsze ; 

6. The Mohammedan Koran. 

There have been, and are, other Sacred Books in 

the world, besides these ; these, however, are proba- 
ta) 



14 



WHA T IS THE BIBLE ? 



bly the most important — at least the most important 
that have come down to our day. Not to speak of 
the less notable sacred Books at present in existence, 
it is now known that the ancient Egyptians possessed 
sacred volumes ; and one of them — the Book of the 
Dead — has been brought to light, if not entire, at least 
in considerable part. In Babylon and Assyria, too, 
important fragments of what may be called a Sacred 
Literature, have been discovered. The Greeks have 
not left us anything which we can properly call a sa- 
cred book. The poems of Homer are great national 
epics, but they have never received that " general 
recognition or sanction, which alone/' as Max Muller 
says, " can impart a sacred or canonical character." 
Whatever the Celts, the Germans and the Slaves 
may have possessed of sacred traditions about their 
gods and heroes, having been handed down by oral 
tradition chiefly, has perished beyond all hope of 
recovery. Some portion of the Eddas alone give us 
an idea of what the religious and heroic poetry of the 
Scandinavians may have been. So that I speak with 
sufficient accuracy, perhaps, when I name as the more 
important Sacred Books or Bibles of the world — the 
Brahman Bible, the Buddhist Bible, the Persian or 
Zoroastrian Bible, the two Chinese Bibles, the Mo- 
hammedan Bible ; and, added to these, the Jewish 
Bible (our Old Testament), and the Christian Bible 
(our Old and New Testaments). 



ORIGIN OF SACRED BOOKS. 15 

Sacred Books that arise anonymously, and out of a 
back-ground of Legend. — Sacred Books or Bibles 
seem to come into being naturally and inevitably. 
Almost every people, as soon as they begin to have a 
literature at all, have a Bible, and it comes about 
somewhat in this way : In the early times of a peo- 
ple, before they have a literature and before they have 
writing, there are tales like our nursery tales, and 
stories and legends about extraordinary persons and 
events, which in one way or another get into exist- 
ence. The most notable and striking of these will be 
told from generation to generation, from family to 
family, from tribe to tribe, and spreading far and wide 
will often become in the course of many ages the 
heritage of a whole nation. As all men are naturally 
religious, and as almost all in primitive conditions 
of society are warlike, these tales and legends will 
assume, quite prominently, either a warlike or a re- 
ligious character. And as rude instruments of music 
are invented, and as the people attain to the ability to 
sing or chant, these legends and tales will assume, 
more or less, metrical forms. Hence come heroic 
ballads, war songs and religious hymns. 

When at length the people arrive at that condition 
of civilization in which writing makes its appearance, 
it is, of course, these heritages of the past, these 
hymns, ballads, legends, and tales, together with 
accounts of religious rites, and expressions of re- 



16 WHAT IS THE BIBLE f 

ligious worship, that naturally are embalmed in writ 
ing first. These, because they come down from re- 
vered ancestors, and have the halo of a shadowy past 
upon them, are naturally looked upon as peculiarly 
sacred. The more religious of these become natu- 
rally the first germ of the future Bible. As ages go 
on, other writings come into being of one kind and 
another, some of which are of necessity religious or 
semi-religious. By a sort of natural selection the 
best of these, or such as meet with most popular 
favor, or are most in harmony with the religious feel- 
ing and sentiment of the people, are preserved, and 
grow in honor ; while the rest sink into obscurity or 
pass away altogether. These that have thus been 
preserved and lifted up into honor, as time passes 
away, grow venerable, and by-and-by are added to the 
earlier Sacred Literature ; and thus the Bible grows. 
These additions may be few or many according to 
circumstances. But at last there comes a time, as a 
result of national disaster, or the stagnation of intel- 
lectual and religious life, or for m some other cause, 
when a line gets , drawn, and the Sacred Book gets 
sealed up. Anything written at any point of time on 
this side the line is not true Bible. Such is in brief 
the history of the origin of one class of Sacred Books 
or Bibles. 

Sacred Books that originate in a Man. — In the 
case of another class, the starting-point is a man. A 



ORIGIN OF SACRED BOOKS. 17 

great religious teacher makes his appearance among 
a people, makes a profound impression, inaugurates a 
new religious movement, or, if you please, a new 
religion. It is entirely natural that a new Bible 
should come into being as a result. His followers of 
course desire to preserve an account of his life, and a 
record of his teachings. If he himself writes a book 
or a series of books, this or these will constitute the 
Bible, or at least the leading and most important part 
of the Bible. If, however, he does not leave behind 
anything written by himself, then, naturally, followers 
and admirers of him write out and preserve a record 
of his deeds and words as best they can, and these 
will constitute the Bible or the beginning of it. As 
Bibles that have thus had their origin in a man, we 
name of course the two Bibles of China, which sprung 
from Confucius and Laou-tsze ; the Buddhist Bible, 
which sprung from Sakya-muni, or Buddha ; the 
Koran, which came from Mahomet ; and the New 
Testament, which is the outcome of the life of Jesus. 

With reference to all the gre.at Bibles of the world, 
in whichever of these two ways they may have had 
their origin, several things are to be said. 

I. Time brings Sacredness. — All great Sacred 
Books, so far as we are able to find out, have acquired 
their peculiar sacredness, for the most part, by age. 
They might have been much prized at first, or they 
might not ; but all thought of putting them in a 



1 8 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

category by themselves, as Sacred Books, was, as a 
rule, absent at first, and only came in after times and 
by slow degrees. As they grew old they grew sacred. 
As men passed on away from the times and circum- 
stances of their origin, they came by degrees to think 
of that origin as supernatural. The reverence that 
began to surround them was the halo of antiquity. 

The tendency of the human mind is always and 
everywhere much the same ; the individual thinks of 
the years of his childhood as golden years ; the nation 
or race thinks of the age of its childhood as a golden 
age. Most peoples of the past have either worshipped 
their ancestors, or at least have thought of their ances- 
tors as in some way more than human. Institutions, 
or customs, or traditions, or writings, or heritages of 
any kind that have descended through many genera- 
tions, have invariably tended to become sacred in the 
eyes of those to whom they have fallen. Particularly 
has this always been the case in the more fixed and 
less progressive civilizations of the East, where origi- 
nated the great Bibles of the world. Hardly one of 
these Bibles, indeed hardly *one of the writings or frag- 
ments of which any Bible is made up, seems to have 
been regarded as in any true sense sacred when it 
first came into existence. What the fathers prized, 
the children venerated, and the children's children 
lifted up into the miraculous and the divine, 

It would be interesting and instructive to take up, 



GROWTH OF SACRED BOOKS. 



19 



in turn, several of the great Bibles mentioned, and 
trace in detail the steps, as modern scholarship has 
been able to discover them, by which they advanced 
from the position of merely good and highly prized 
books to the position of Sacred Books. But this the 
scope of our essay will not allow us to do with refer- 
ence to any except our own Bible. Suffice it to say 
that with some of them this advance was very slow, and 
took hundreds of years. In the case of the Vedas and 
and Zend Avesta it appears to have taken many hun- 
dreds of years — as is also the case with at least some 
parts of our own Bible. (See Chapter II.) 

In regard to our Old Testament, as is well known, 
the idea of sacredness attached first to the Pentateuch, 
or the " Five Books of Moses," or the " Law," as it was 
called. And the sacredness of even this seems to have 
been something very shadowy and intangible for a long 
time. The part of the Old Testament called by the 
Jews "The Prophets" came next to be regarded as 
sacred ; while all that part then known as " Hagio- 
gra£>ha," or " Chetubim," and including such books as 
the Psalms, and Proverbs, and Job, which are generally 
held to-day in higher esteem than any other of the Old 
Testament books, did not come to be regarded as 
really sacred much before the time of Christ. Indeed, 
at the time of Christ; all this part of the Old Testament 
was ranked much lower in authority, or sacredness 
than the rest. 



20 WHA T IS THE BIBLE ? 

As to the New Testament writings, the Epistles 
seem to have come to be regarded as sacred, or authori- 
tative, considerably earlier than the Gospels or the 
Acts. But for a long time — certainly for two centu- 
ries — the New Testament writings were none of them 
looked upon by the Christian church as equally sacred 
and authoritative with the Old Testament. And at 
least three or four centuries passed away before it was 
decided, more than in part, which particular ones, of 
the large number of writings produced within a cen- 
tury or two after the death of Jesus, should be included 
in the New Testament canon — that is to say, should 
be regarded as sacred — and which should be cast 
aside. But this subject of the formation of our own 
Scripture canon will come up for more extended notice 
further on. 

2. Fictitious perfection : facing backward. — Another 
thing that may be said of all the various Sacred Books 
of the world, is, that just as soon and just in so far 
as any people have come to regard any book as 
sacred, they have begun to be blind to its faults, to 
take it as an ultimatum, and to be unwilling to seek 
for, or even to receive, anything as by any possibility 
better than it, in any particular. Religion is always 
an advancing and growing thing before it produces for 
itself a Sacred Book, and especially during the years 
or the centuries in which it is producing for itself a 
Sacred Book. But that Book once completed, as a 



RELIGION PETRIFIED, 2 r 

rule religion straightway ceases to advance or grow, 
Thereafter its eyes are not turned forward but back- 
ward. Everything henceforth must be estimated as 
good or bad according as it does or does not agree 
with the teaching of the Book. 

Curious illustrations of this are abundant. For ex- 
ample : In early times the use of metals was unknown, 
and consequently the knives which the priests of a 
certain religion used in connection with certain of 
their rites, of necessity had to be of stone. Later, 
when metal had come into use, we should naturally 
suppose the crude stone knife would give place to a 
better knife of metal. Not so, however ! The knife 
originally used was of stone ; nothing else therefore 
would ever do in any future time but a stone knife. 
The fact that the Book had grown to be regarded as 
sacred had petrified the religion it taught — had cut off 
the possibility of future progress and improvement, — 
had made sacred every crudeness, every imperfection, 
every childish rite or ceremony, as well as every false 
doctrine, which but for the notion of a sacred and 
faultless Book the people in due time would have out- 
grown. 

Thus it is that in India a single text of the Vedas 
(probably misinterpreted, at that), has resulted in the 
immolation of vast numbers of widows on the funeral 
piles of their husbands. Thus, too, it is, that we see 
many a religious rite practised, and many an absurd 



22 WHA T IS THE BIBLE t 

doctrine believed to-day in Christendom, which long 
ago would have been laid aside but for the notion of a 
Book that is sacred, and whose every word, therefore, 
must be accepted, and whose lightest injunction must 
be carried out to the letter, as long as time lasts. Men 
can't get away from the stone knife. This seems to 
be the reason why one of the largest of the Christian 
sects in this country is so insistent upon performing 
the rite of Christian baptism in exactly the mode in 
which they conceive it to have been performed in 
Judea eighteen hundred years ago. The difference in 
times, habits of the people, climate, makes no differ- 
ence ; at the time the Book cry stallized into sacredness, 
baptism seems to have been practiced generally in a 
certain form ; and so it must be practiced in the same 
precise form to-day — even if a hole has to be cut 
through the ice in a river to make that form possible. 
It is the stone knife over again. 

We have here, too, an explanation of the strange 
fact, that so many excellent Christian people in this 
country only a little while ago defended slavery as 
something good and right. It happened that the peo- 
ple from whom the Old Testament part of our Sacred 
Book came, held slaves, and, in common with most 
other nations in that early age of the world, thought it 
right so to do. The centuries that have passed since 
that time have carried the world forward to the point 
where all the leading nations now see plainly that 



THE PAST FETTERING THE PRESENT 



23 



slavery is wrong. But the fact that the Sacred Book 
sanctioned slavery blinded many eyes. Instead of 
asking what was right, men and women asked what 
the Sacred Book taught : which was only equivalent to 
asking what was supposed to be right by a people of 
much lower civilization than ours, two or three thou- 
sand years ago, at the time the Book crystallized into 
sacredness. This was a fearful mistake, which result- 
ed in arraying tens of thousands of as conscientious 
and kind-hearted people as the world ever saw, on the 
side of as dark and cruel, and in its spirit unchristian, an 
institution as has disgraced our modern world. Such 
is a specimen of the evils that necessarily come from 
going back into the past and taking a book written in 
an age long gone by, and for an age long gone by, 
and setting it up as a standard for the present age 
— as the various peoples of the world have set up their 
Sacred Books or Bibles as standards for all time. 

3. Sacred Books tolerate no Rivals. — Another 
thing seems to be common with nearly all the great 
Sacred Books of the world, or rather with the believers 
in nearly all these books ; and that is, that, just as soon 
as any one of these books comes to be set up as sacred, 
or as a Bible, it is from that time forward regarded by 
its adherents as the only Bible, and all the other Sa- 
cred Books of the world are cast out as false. In 
other words, the process of canonization of a book, if I 
may so say, or of lifting it up from a merely good 



24 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



book into a Sacred Book or Bible, seems as a rule to be 
a process of degradation or condemnation of all other 
books and religions. And so the Buddhist has ever 
been the bitter foe of the Brahman, and the Moham- 
medan of the Buddhist, and the Christian of the Mo- 
hammedan. Whereas, the evident truth is, each of 
the world's Bibles contains a great deal that is good, 
with more or less that is of no value, if not positively 
bad. Each religion has divine elements in it, as well 
as elements that are very undivine, and it is a great 
pity that the eyes of men should be blinded to this 
fact. It is not only a great pity that the adherents of 
other Bibles and religions of the world should be blinded 
to this fact as regards our Christian Scriptures and re- 
ligion, but it is also a pity that we should be blinded to 
the same fact as regards scriptures and religions which 
are not Christian. 

4. Reading Between the Lines. — Another thing 
common to all of the world's great Sacred Book is, 
that as time goes on and the people who accept them 
grow to larger knowledge and better conceptions of 
truth than were possible in the earlier ages which pro- 
duced the books, the adherents of these books always 
develop a marvellous facility for explaining away con- 
tradictions and inaccuracies and things which the in- 
crease of knowledge has shown not to be true, and 
for reading into the books in a thousand places all 
sorts of new meanings and so-called " deeper inter- 



FORCED INTERPRETATIONS. 



25 



pretations," to make the teachings of the books har- 
monize with the increase of knowledge. As Vis- 
count Amberley, in his Analysis of Belief, clearly points 
out, the readers of these books approaching them with 
the fixed notion that they contain vast treasures of 
superhuman wisdom, are sure to find there, to a large 
extent, what they seek. That which really belongs to 
the mind of the reader is attributed to that of the 
writer. The natural and simple meaning of the words 
is set aside. All sorts of forced interpretations are 
put upon them for the purpose of compelling them to 
harmonize with that which it is supposed they ought 
to mean. Statements, doctrines, and allusions are dis- 
covered in them which not only have no existence in 
their pages, but which are absolutely foreign to the 
epoch at which they were written. This process of 
false interpretation is greatly favored by distance of 
time. Says Prof. Benjamin Jowett : " All nations who 
have ancient writings have endeavored to read in them 
the riddle of the past. The Brahmin, repeating his 
Vedic hymns, sees them pervaded by a thousand mean- 
ings, which have been handed down by tradition ; the 
one of which he is ignorant is that which we perceive 
to be the true one." Says Max Miiller — ''Greater 
violence is done by successive interpreters to sacred 
writings than to any other relics of ancient literature. 
Ideas grow and change, yet each generation tries to 
find its own ideas reflected in the sacred pages of 



26 WHA T IS THE BIBLE ? 

their early prophets. Passages in the Veda and Zend 
Avesta which do not bear on religious or philosophi- 
cal doctrines are generally explained simply and natur- 
ally, even by the latest of native commentators. But 
as soon as any word or sentence can be so turned as 
to support a [religious] doctrine, however modern, or a 
[religious] precept, however irrational, the simplest 
phrases are tortured and mangled till at last they are 
made to yield their assent to ideas the most foreign 
to the minds of the authors of the Veda and Zend 
Avesta." This practice of interpreting into Sacred 
Books what later ages think ought to be in them, and 
out of them what later ages think ought not to be in 
them, is pointed out and illustrated with regard to the 
Chinese, Brahmanic and Buddhist Sacred Books, by 
Dr. Legge, Dr. Muir, Burnouf and others.* 

Illustrations of the same with regard to our own 

* The later Greeks regarded the writings of Homer with the 
same superstitious veneration, and interpreted into them all sorts of 
doctrines which could have had no place in the mind of the writer. For 
example, " they found therein the Neptunian and Vulcanian theory > 
the sphericity of the earth ; the doctrines of Democritus, Herodotus, 
and of Socrates and Plato in their turn." Parker's "Discourse of Relig- 
ion" " When reason, in its manly growth, can no longer be satisfied 
with the food that sustained its infancy, imagination comes with a vase 
of ambrosial allegories. In this way, Philo found the poetic system of 
Plato within the practical and circumstantial laws of Moses, and the 
Christian fathers found all the inward warfare of their souls in the 
wanderings and battles of the Israelites." Mrs. Child 's " Progress of 
Religious Ideas." vol. iii., pp. 442, 443. 



SCIENCE AND SCRIPTURE. 



27 



Bible are more numerous still. Indeed the whole 
history of Christianity is full of exhibitions of the most 
marvellous and unflagging ingenuity, in inventing 
new interpretations of Scripture, to keep pace with 
the growth of human thought and the progress of 
knowledge and science.* 

Almost every scientific theory that comes into 
existence is found to conflict in some point or other 
with the theological notions which an unscientific 
past has handed down. But the theologians are ever 
on the alert ; and war to the knife is at once declared 
against the scientific intruder. All friends of the 
Bible are summoned to the holy war. The conflict 
rages fiercely and shows no sign of abatement until it 
is seen that the scientists are getting the day, when 
it begins to be discovered by the theologians that after 
all the new theory is harmless, indeed there is no dis- 
crepancy between it and Scripture. The discrepancy 
that had been supposed to exist grew out of a wrong 
Scripture interpretation. In fact, instead of the two 
being in conflict, the scientific theory is really taught 
in the Bible * 

* " As soon as science has won the assent of public opinion to any of 
its discoveries, or even established the preponderating probability of 
any of its theories, the religious world has ever made haste to declare 
that former interpretations of the Scripture have been mistaken, and 
that this new discovery of science is just what the sacred record has 
always taught from the earliest times down, if only it had been rightly 
understood. 

" The six days of the first chapter of Genesis never meant days 



28 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

Thus we see a remarkable similarity in the 
methods of interpretation adopted generally by the 
adherents of the various Sacred Books of the World. 
Everywhere we discover the same facility in " explain- 
ed twenty-four hours, but geological epochs. The Adam whose crea- 
tion took place just four thousand years before Christ was not, of 
course, the first man, but the progenitor merely of the chosen higher 
race. The Deluge was a local cataclysm or geological subsidence in 
the neighborhood of the Caspian Sea, etc., etc. As each past age read 
into the Bible its favorite theories, in Tertullian's time the materiality 
of the soul, and in Augustine's the flatness of the earth, so the inter- 
preters and commentators of to-day with equal ingenuity can dovetail 
the inspired record into every latest crinkle of scientific fact or fancy. 
Spontaneous generation, they tell you, is plainly taught in Genesis ; 
evolution anticipated by Moses ; and Darwin and Job evidently had 
the same ideas. There is a popular story ascribed to the ex-premier 
of England, in which the objection made to a pleasant plan of marry- 
ing Garibaldi to a wealthy English lady, trig., that Garibaldi already 
had one wife, is triumphantly met by the suggestion that Gladstone 
could be readily got to explain her away. The * reconcilers ' of Science 
and Scripture whom we have been speaking of manifest a theological 
dissipating power of equal strength." — Ja?nes T. Bixby. 

" Pretty soon it will be difficult to find an orthodox thinker who 
will not claim to be a disciple of Darwin. Just as we have lived to hear 
the old-fashioned Whigs assert that they always were original Garri- 
sonian Abolitionists." — John Weiss. 

"The doctrine of evolution is already almost triumphant. There 
scarcely remains for the recalcitrants any other resources than to demon- 
strate its perfect agreement with the (theological) dogmas they are not 
willing to abandon. The thing is in process of execution. The inter- 
preters are skilful, the sacred texts obliging, the metaphysical theories 
ductile, malleable, flexible. Courage ! We must be very narrow-minded, 
indeed, not to recognize in the first chapter of Genesis a succinct ex- 
position of the Darwinian theory." — Ldounicau, " Biology," p. 303. 



SIMILARITIES BETWEEN SACRED BOOKS. 29 

ing away "whatever proves itself troublesome in their 
pages, and in reading into them whatever new mean- 
ings the changes of the times and the growth of men's 
thought may seem to make necessary. 

5. Similarities in the Teachings of the Various 
Sacred Books. — One other thing should be said about 
all the Sacred Books, and that is, they have very 
much in common. This is true as regards the more 
superficial and less essential parts of their teachings — 
for example, their legends, their mythological notions, 
their accounts of miraculous events, their rites and 
ceremonies ; and it is true, also, as regards the more 
deep and essential parts of their teachings — for exam- 
ple, their social and moral precepts, and the great 
body of their ethical doctrine. 

1. First notice the more superficial parts of their 
teachings. Sacrificial ideas and ideas of atonements 
unquestionably came into the Jew T ish and Christian 
religions from the religions of the heathen world. If 
Mr. Moody will only go to the various heathen Bibles 
of the world, he can find texts enough to weave into 
not two but twenty sermons on " the blood." The 
rite of baptism is found to have existed long before 
the time of Christ, and in many parts of the world, 
besides in Palestine. The Sacrament, or Eucharist, 
or Lord's Supper, seems to be found essentially in 
other religions. Circumcision did not originate with 
the Jews, but was practiced in Egypt long before the 



30 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



Jewish people had any existence. The ideas of im- 
maculate conceptions and virgin mothers and virgin- 
born gods are common to many religions and Bibles 
besides the Jewish and Christian.* The Greek god 
Mars was fabled to have been born by an immaculate 
conception of Juno. Zoroaster was supposed to have 
been born of an immaculate conception by a ray from 
the Divine Reason. Both Buddha and Krishna of 
India are reported to have been immaculately con- 
ceived. The Hindoo Scriptures tell us that the mother 
of the latter (Krishna) was overshadowed by the god 
Brahma. The Messianic idea, too, is one found in 
other Bibles besides our own.f The Chinese Scrip- 
tures contain prophecies of a Chinese Messiah who 
was to come. The Hindoo Scriptures contain like 
prophecies of a Hindoo Messiah. Miracles are com- 
mon to most of the Bibles, and even the very same 
kinds of miracles, such as raising the dead to life, 
healing the blind and lame, voices speaking out of 
heaven to persons favored of God, the Holy Spirit 
coming in the form of a dove, and so forth.J We are 

* Brinton's " Religious Sentiment," p. 6S, et seq. 

t Ibid. p. 177, et seq. 

% In the different religions of the human race, "we constantly meet 
the same leading features. The same religious institutions — monks, 
missionaries, priests, and pilgrims. The same ritual, — prayers, liturgies, 
sacrifices. The same implements, — frankincense, candles, holy water, 
relics, amulets, votive offerings. The same symbols, — the cross, 
the serpent, the all-seeing eye, the halo of rays. The same pro- 



SIMILARITIES IN SA CRED BOOKS. 3 1 

told that, when the first Christian missionaries went 
among the Buddhists, they were astonished to find a 
religion so much resembling their own in its rites and 
ceremonies and many of its ideas, that they could 
only account for the resemblance by supposing that 
the devil had forestalled God by coming there ahead 
of them, and setting up a counterfeit as near like 
Christianity as possible.* 

phesies and miracles, — the dead restored and evil spirits cast out. The 
same holy days; for Easter and Christmas were kept as spring and 
autumn festivals, centuries before our era, by Egyptians, Persians, 
Saxons, Romans. The same artistic designs; for the mother and 
child stand depicted, not only in the temples of Europe, but in those 
of Etruria and Arabia, Egypt and Thibet." " So also the idea of 
incarnation. He (the Messiah) is predicted by prophecy, hailed by 
sages, born of a virgin, attended by miracle, borne to heaven without 
tasting death, and with promise of return. Zoroaster and Confucius 
have no human father. Osiris is the Son of God ; he is called the 
Revealer of Life and Light ; he first teaches one chosen race ; he then 
goes with his apostles to teach the Gentiles, conquering the world by 
peace ; he is slain by evil powers ; after death he descends into hell, 
then rises again, and presides at the last judgment of mankind ; those 
who call upon his name shall be saved. Buddha is born of a virgin ; 
his name means the Word, the Logos, but he is known more tenderly 
as the Saviour of Man ; he embarasses his teachers, when a child, by 
his understanding and answers ; he is tempted in the wilderness, when 
older, etc." Higginson's " Sympathy of Religions," pp. 9-1 1. 

* For more full and definite information regarding the similarities 
in superficial things existing between the various Sacred Books and 
religions of the world, see Mrs. Child's " Progress of Religious Ideas ;" 
translations of the various Sacred Books; Amberley's "Analysis of 
Religious Belief ; " Brinton's " The Religious Sentiment ; " Tylor's 
" Primitive Culture." 



32 



WHA T IS THE BIBLE f 



2. But it is not simply in regard to the more 
external and unimportant things that there is a great 
deal in common between the different Bibles and the 
different religions of the world, but the same is even 
more emphatically true as regards the deeper and 
more vital things, particularly the ethical and spiritual 
teachings of the different Bibles. 

Says Max M tiller, " There is no religion — or if 
there is I do not know it — which does not say, ' Do 
good, avoid evil.' I wish," he continues, " that I could 
read you extracts I have collected from the sacred 
books of the ancient world, grains of truth more pre- 
cious to me than grains of gold ; prayers so simple 
and so true that we could all join in them." After 
giving a translation of a prayer of some length from 
the Vedas, he adds, " I am not blind to the blemishes 
of this ancient prayer, but I am not blind to its beauty 
either ; and I think you will admit that the discovery 
of even one such a poem among the hymns of the 
Rig Veda, and the certainty that such a poem was 
composed in India at least three thousand years ago, 
without any inspiration but that which all can find 
who seek for it if happily they may find it, is well 
worth the labor of a life. It shows that man was 
never (nor in any nation) forsaken of God." 

Here is a passage from Buddha, so noble as to 
be not unworthy of a place in our Old or New Testa- 
ment : 



SACRED BOOKS HA VE MUCH IN COMMON. 33 

" All that we are is the result of what we have thought ; it 
is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If 
a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him as 
the wheel follows the foot of him who draws the cart. 

As the bee collects honey and departs without injuring the 
flower, so let him who is wise dwell on the earth. 

1 These sons belong to me, and this wealth belongs to me ! ' 
— with such thoughts a fool is tormented. He himself does not 
belong to himself ; how much less sons and wealth ! 

Let no man think lightly of evil, saying in his heart, It will 
not come nigh me. Let no man think lightly of good, saying in 
his heart, It will not benefit me. Even by the falling of water- 
drops a water-pot is filled. 

He whose evil deeds are covered by good deeds, brightens 
up this world like the moon when she rises from behind a cloud. 

Let a man overcome anger by love, evil by good, the greedy 
by liberality, the liar by truth. " * 

Here is another passage, abridged from the Brah- 
man Bible, which cannot fail to call to the mind of the 
reader some of the most exalted portions of our own 
Job, Isaiah and the Psalms : 

" Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ? 
He who gives life ; He who gives strength ; 
Whose command all the bright gods revere ; 
Whose shadow is immortality. f 

* From a Collection of Buddha's Sayings, translated from the Pali. 
— Sec Max Miiller's " Science of Religion, p. 112. 

t "Some of the hymns (of the Brahman Bible), especially those 
addressed to Varuna, are marked by a deep sense of guilt, and the 
mighty Indra must be approached in faith. The doctrine of immor- 
tality, also, indicates the ethical character of the Vedic religion." 
Tide's "History of Religion," pp. 116, 117. 

3 



34 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ? 

He who through his power is the one King of the breathing 
and awakening world — 

Who governs all, man and beast. 

Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ? 

He whose greatness these snowy mountains, whose greatness 
the sea proclaims ; 

He through whom the sky is bright and the earth firm ; 

He through whom the heaven was established, — nay, the 
highest heaven ; 

He to whom heaven and earth, standing firm by His will, 
look up. 

Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ? 

He who by His might looked even over the water-clouds — 

The clouds which gave strength and lit the sacrifice ; 

He who alone is God above all gods. 

Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice." * 

Here are some shorter passages from the various 
Bibles. 

When a disciple asked Confucius about benevo- 
lence, he said, " It is love to all men ; " and elsewhere, 
he said, " My doctrine is easy to understand/' and his 
chief disciple adds, " It consists only in having the 
heart right, and in loving one's neighbor as one's self." 
When he was asked, " Is there one word which may 
serve as a rule for all life ?" he answered, "Is not 

* Rig-Veda X., 121. See Max Miiller's "Chips from a German 
Workshop," vol. i., p. 29 ; " History of Ancient Sanscrit Literature " 
(by Miiller), p. 569. Amberley's " Religious Belief," p. 43S. (Am. Ed.) 



ETHICAL SIMILARITY OF SACRED BOOKS, 



35 



reciprocity such a word? What you do not like 
when done to yourself, do not do that to others." * 

How almost perfectly are these words from one of 
the Chinese Bibles like the very highest utterances 
of Jesus in our own Bible ! 

Here are two other noble passages from Confu- 
cius, in a different strain : 

" In the Book of Poetry are three hundred pieces, but the 
design of them all may be embraced in that one sentence, i Have 
no depraved thoughts.' " 

" Heaven penetrates to the bottom of our hearts, like light 
into a dark chamber. We must conform ourselves to it until 
we are like two instruments of music tuned to the same pitch. 
Our passions shut up the door of our souls against God." 

Says the other Chinese Bible — that of Laou-tsze 
— " Recompense enmity by doing good." The Koran, 
or Mohammedan Bible, says : " None of you can be 

* It is sometimes claimed that the Golden Rule of Jesus rises in- 
comparably above this corresponding utterance of Confucius, in that 
the former is positive in form, while the latter is only negative. Per- 
sons making this claim evidently forget to read the first half of Confu- 
cius' saying. In answer to the question put to him he points out that 
"reciprocity" is a word that serves as a rule for all life. But reci- 
procity is positive : it is " to do as we would be done by." Having 
thus, by this one comprehensive word, put forth the positive side of 
the rule, he then proceeds to state the negative side. I call attention 
to this, not because I do not place the teachings of Jesus, as a whole, 
above those of Confucius, if not in moral strength at least in spiritual 
elevation. I certainly do thus place them. But that is only an addi- 
tional reason why I should be just to so great and noble a religious 
teacher as Confucius. 



36 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

called a true believer till he loves for his brother what 
he loves for himself." Another passage of the Koran 
is this : 

" Say there is one God alone — 

God the eternal : 
He begetteth not 

And he is not begotten ; 
And there is none like unto him." 

The five commandments of the Buddhist Bible are : 

1. Thou shalt not kill. 

2. Thou shalt not steal. 

3. Thou shalt not commit adultery, or any impurity. 

4. Thou shalt not lie. 

5. Thou shall not intoxicate thyself. 

Again says the Buddhist Bible : " Hatred does not 
cease by hatred at any time ; hatred ceases by love." 

The " eight steps," which, according to Buddha, 
lead to the highest happiness, are right views, right 
thoughts, right speech, right actions, right living, right 
exertion, right recollection, right meditation. 

Says the Bible of the Brahmans. " Let no man 
be offended with those who are angry with him, but 
gently reply to those who curse him." 

Says the Persian Bible : " To strike a man or vex 
him with words is a sin ; " and it gives this prayer to 
be used by all who would sincerely worship God : " In 
whatever way I may have sinned, against whomsoever 
I may have sinned, howsoever I may have sinned, I 



BROTHERHOOD OF RELIGIONS. 



37 



repent of it with thoughts, words, and works. For- 
give !" 

And thus I might go on quoting from all these dif- 
ferent Bibles at great length ; and, judging from the 
sentiments expressed, no one could possibly tell which 
I was quoting from — the Bible of the Brahmans, the 
Bible of the Buddhists, the Bible of the Persians, the 
Chinese Bible of Confucius, the Chinese Bible of Laou- 
tsze, the Mohammedan Bible, the Jewish Bible, or the 
Christian Bible — so nearly alike are all these Bibles 
in their great central, ethical doctrines. 

In short, if we could carry our study far enough we 
should find what Mr. Higginson says, essentially true, 
that " neither faith, nor love, nor truth, nor disinter- 
estedness, nor forgiveness, nor patience, nor peace, nor 
equality, nor education, nor missionary effort, nor 
prayer, nor honesty, nor the sentiment of brotherhood, 
nor reverence for woman, nor the spirit of humility, 
nor the fact of martyrdom, nor any other good thing 
is monopolized by any form of faith. All religions 
recognize, more or less remotely, these principles ; all 
do something to exemplify, something to dishonor 
them." * 

* " Sympathy of Religions," p. 25. For a comparison of the various 
Sacred Books and religions of the world with respect to their moral 
and spiritual teachings, see Conway's " Sacred Anthology ; " Miiller's 
" Science of Religion ; " Miiller's " Chips from a German Workshop/' 
vol. i. ; Samuel Johnson's " Oriental Religions " (volumes on China 
and India); Clodd's "Childhood of Religions;" Amberley's "An- 



38 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

Not that I would be understood as claiming that 
all the great Sacred Books of the world stand on a 
level, or that their teachings are identical They do 
not stand on a level, and in a thousand things their 
teachings are not identical. As I have already said, 
undoubtedly our own Bible, particularly our New Tes- 
tament, is greatly superior to any of the Bibles of the 
so-called heathen nations. For it must be remem- 
bered that the passages quoted above are among the 
finest to be found in the various Sacred Books from 
which they are taken. The contents of these Sacred 
Books range all the way from passages on a level 
with these quotations, down to the basest supersti- 
tions and the most childish follies. Of course there- 
fore in comparing these other Bibles of the world with 
our own we must compare the foregoing passages not 
with the lowest, nor even with the average, but with 
the highest and best of our new and Old Testament 
teachings. What I affirm is, simply, what the broad- 
est and best scholarship affirms, viz., that while all the 
great Bibles of mankind have enough in common of 
things trivial and superficial, if not erroneous, so that no 
one of them can say to the rest, " I am wholly of God ; " 
it is also true that all have enough in common of 

alysis of Religious Belief ; " Clarke's " Ten Great Religions ; " Tide's 
" History of Religion ; " Mrs. Child's " Progress of Religious Ideas," 
and " Aspirations of the World ; " and translations of the Sacred Books 
themselves, so far as such translations are accessible. 



MANY BIBLES : RELIGION UNIVERSAL. 39 

things that are deep and high and eternally true, so 
that no one of them can say to any other, " You are 
wholly of man or of the devil." 

So, then, to the question before us : What is our 
Bible ? we have our first answer, to wit : It is one — 
doubtless it is the highest and best — but it is one of 
the six or eight great Sacred Books or Bibles of the 
world. 

Thus we see that Religion is a broader and there- 
fore a richer thing than Jew or Christian or Pagan 
has been willing to believe.* Nations and peoples have 
ever claimed to have monopolies in Religion ; ever 
have they denied that it had any fountains beyond 
their own prophets and their own Sacred Books. 
But in the light of the scholarship of to-day, we see 

* " It gave men larger and grander views of God when they learnt 
that the earth is one among many bodies circling round the sun, and 
that the sun himself is one of the numberless suns that are strewn as 
star dust in the heavens ; and (rightly viewed) it cannot fail to give 
each of us, whose nature is made to trust, a larger trust in, and more 
loving thought of, Him, to learn that our religion is one among many 
religions, and that nowhere is there an altogether godless race. To 
use a homely figure, the religions of the world are like human faces, 
all of which have something in common — nose, eyes, mouth, and so 
on ; while all differ, some being more beautiful than others. But 
wherever any religion exists which has struck its roots deep down into 
the life of a people, there must be some truth in it which has nurtured 
them, and which is worth the seeking ; for the hunger of the soul of 
man can no more be satisfied with a lie, than the hunger of his body 
can be appeased with stones." Clodd's u Childhood of Religions," 
pp. 8, 9. 



40 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



that all such ideas are narrow and poor. Religion is 
as universal as sunshine, or love, or God. Its fountains 
are in every land ; its prophets dwell under all skies. 
It has given mankind, not one Sacred Book, but many. 
We may no longer believe that God chose out one 
little, isolated people of the world, to be the sole recip- 
ients of his revelation and his salvation, leaving all 
the other peoples and nations of the earth neglected 
and uncared for.* The study of the great religions of 
the world, which is going forward so rapidly, is giving 
birth to the nobler and worthier faith, that God is the 
God of the whole earth. As Saint Peter puts it — " God 
is no respecter of persons (that is, does not have pets 
and favorites among his human children) ; but in every 
land he that reverences Him and works righteousness 
is accepted with Him." Or, as it is sung by Whittier : 

" All souls that struggle and aspire, 
All hearts of prayer, by Thee are lit ; 

And, dim or clear, thy tongues of fire 
On dusky tribes and centuries sit " 

* Kuenen's Religion of Israel, vol. i., pp. 51-2. Higginson's Sym- 
pathy of Religions. Samuel Johnson's " Oriental Religions,'* vol. i., 
Introduction. 



CHAPTER II. 

MORE PARTICULAR ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN AND 
GROWTH OF OUR BIBLE. 



(4i) 



" The collection of writings which forms the Bible is, in its greater 
part, the remains of the ancient Hebrew literature. It is not a 
Creed nor a Creed-book, which men are called upon to receive under 
penalty of damnation. It nowhere claims to be so. Nor is it a body 
of immutable laws for our time, or for any other. Many of its ideas 
on creation, on the Divine Being, and His intercourse with men, and 
on various other subjects, are simply such as were suited to the infancy 
of the human race. The Bible may nevertheless, if wisely used, be 
a help and an influence to guide and enlighten the conscience ; as 
it is a channel through which the Unseen Spirit has often spoken to 
men, and may still speak to us, if we will listen." — G. Vance Smith, 
Member of the Bible- Revision Committee. 

" The experience of many ages of speculative revolution has shown 
that while knowledge grows and old beliefs fall away, and creed suc- 
ceeds to creed, nevertheless that Faith which makes the innermost 
essence of Religion is indestructible." — Prof. John Fiske, in " Cosmic 
Philosophy:' 

" No one would venture now-a-days, to quote from a book, whether 
sacred or profane, without having asked these simple and yet momen- 
tous questions : When was it written ? Where ? and by whom ? Was 
the author an eye-witness, or does he only relate what he has heard 
from others ? And if the latter, were his authorities at least contem- 
poraneous with the events which they relate, and were they under the 
sway of party feeling or any other disturbing influence ? Was the 
whole book written at once, or does it contain portions of an earlier 
date ; and if so, is it possible for us to separate these earlier docu- 
ments from the body of the book ? "—Max Muller. 



(42) 



CHAPTER II. 

More Particular Account of the Origin and 
Growth of Our Bible. * 

The Bible a Collection of Hebrew Literature . — A 
second answer that the most broad and candid (and 
withal reverent) scholarship of the age makes to the 
question — What is our Bible ? is this : It is a collec- 
tion of Religious Literature of a religiously very- 
notable ancient people — the Jews. 

The word Bible comes from the Greek raPtfiXia 
(plural), which means the books, or the little books. 
Thus in its very etymology it reveals the fact that it 
is not one book but many. 

As the Hindoo Sacred Books are collections of 
the early religious literature of the Hindoos, and as 
the Zend Avesta or Persian Sacred Book is a collec- 
tion of the early religious literature of the Persians, 
so our Old Testament is a collection of the early 
religious literature of the Hebrew people, and our 
New Testament is a collection of religious literature 

(43) 



44 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



of a later period of Jewish history — that period which 
begins with Jesus and extends a hundred and fifty 
years after his death. 

If we would get a proper knowledge of these two 
collections of literature (or, putting the two together 
and speaking of them both combined as one — if we 
■ would get a proper knowledge of this one collection 
of literature) several things need to he clearly under- 
stood. 

The Hebrew People. — First, with regard to the 
people whose literature it is. In war, in politics, in 
art,, in philosophy, in literature other than religious, 
the Jews do not seem to have been remarkable. But 
religiously they were most remarkable. It appears 
not to be extravagant to say, that in the ancient 
world they attained to an eminence as much above all 
other peoples of the aVr&^z-Mediterranean world, in 
religion, as did Greece in art, philosophy and science, 
or Rome in war and government. 

As with individual persons, so with peoples and 
nations, one peculiarly gifted by nature in one direc- 
tion, and favored by circumstances, attains to splendid 
eminence in that direction ; while another, different- 
ly endowed by nature and differently circumstanced, 
attains to eminence in a different direction. The 
Jews seem to have had remarkable religious endow- 
ments, and to have been remarkably circumstanced 
religiously, and as a result we have from them in the 



HEBREW RELIGION A GROWTH. 



45 



literature collected together within the lids of our 
Bible, doubtless on the whole the finest moral and 
religious product of the ancient world ; as fine in its 
way as were the different products of Greece and 
Rome in their respective ways. 

However, we must not understand that the Jews 
always and from the beginning of their history occu- 
pied this high religious elevation, any more than we 
must understand that the Greeks and Romans always 
occupied their high elevation in government and art. 
On the contrary, all came up by a long and slow pro- 
cess of growth and development from humble and 
rude beginnings. Just as we can trace Greece back to 
the time when it had no art, no science, and no phi- 
losophy ; and Rome back to the time when it was only 
a handful of well-nigh lawless barbarians ; so we can 
trace the Jewish people back to the time when their 
religious ideas were, to say the least, very low and 
crude ; indeed to the time when (if we may follow 
such eminent authorities as Drs. Kuenen, Oort, Tiele 
and Kalisch) they had " no civil government," when 
their religion was more or less " polytheistic," when 
" bloody sacrifices formed the chief part of their wor- 
ship," and when " even human sacrifices were not un- 
usual " among them.* From this low condition, and 

* Dr. Oort, Bible for Young People, Eng. Ed., vol. i., pp. 19-20. 
On the subject of the early polytheism of the Jews, Kuenen says : 
" At first the religion of Israel was polytheism. During the eighth 



46 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

through a most extraordinary career, reaching over a 
period of time nearly two-thirds as long as has elapsed 

century before Christ the great majority of the people still acknowl- 
edged the existence of many gods, and, what is more, they worshipped 
them. And we can add that during the seventh century and down to 
the beginning of the Babylonish exile (586 B. C.) this state of things 
remained unaltered. Jeremiah could say to his contemporaries without 
fear of contradiction : ' According to the number of thy cities "are thy 
gods, O Judah!'" Religion of Israel, vol. i., p. 123. Kuenen also 
argues with great force that for several centuries, indeed till near 
the time of the captivity, Jehovah was extensively worshipped under 
the form of a young bull. Religion of Israel, vol. i., pp. 235, 236, 345, 
346. See I. Kings xi. 4-8, where we find Solomon setting up shrine to 
the heathen gods Milcom, Chemosh and Ashtoreth. See, also, L Kings 
xii. 26-33, where after the division of the kingdom we discover the 
northern king building shrines at Dan and Bethel to make good the 
loss of the Temple, and placing in each a gilded bull, saying to the 
people, " Behold thy gods, O Israel, who brought thee out of the land 
of Egypt." See also Tiele's Hist, of Religion, pp. 86, 89. On the sub- 
ject of human sacrifices, Kuenen, says : " In the worship of Molech, 
human sacrifice occupies an important place. But it not unfrequently 
occurs also in the worship of Jehovah. When Micah introduces one 
of his contemporaries, a worshipper of Jehovah, speaking thus : 

' Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, 
The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul ? ' 

it is undoubtedly implied that in his days such a sacrifice was not 
looked upon as at all unreasonable. Human sacrifice appears as an 
element of the bull-worship in the kingdom of the ten tribes ; David 
seeks to avert Jehovah's anger by the death of seven of Saul's prog- 
eny (II. Sam. xxi. 1-14) ; Samuel hews Agag the king of the 
Anielekites in pieces before the face of Jehovah at Gilgal (I. Sam. xv. 
33); Jephthah promises Jehovah a human sacrifice, and fulfils that 
promise in the immolation of his own daughter (Judges xi. 30, 31, 34, 
40)." Earlier than this, Abraham is represented as offering up his son 



JUDAISM BEGINS LOW DOWN. 47 

since the Christian era, the Jewish people rose to the 
splendid height of religious development which they 
at last attained. 

Isaac (Gen. xvii. ) at the command of Jehovah. To be sure this, as 
it happened, did not result in the death of Isaac ; but the account shows 
that Abraham intended to slay him, thought it right to slay him, and 
would have slain him had it not been for the voice which he thought 
he heard, and the discovery of the ram caught in the bushes. For a 
full statement of proofs that human sacrifice was practiced among 
the Jews, see Religion of Israel, vol. i. pp. 236, 237, 249, 252. Also 
see Kalisch's Commentary on Leviticus, Part I., pp. 248-253; also 
Bible for Young People, vol. iii. pp. 316-317, 393-395. I will quote 
briefly from the latter : " The sacrifice of children to Molech was per- 
formed in the valley of the Son of Hinnom, which stretches along 
the southern boundary of Jerusalem. Now in this valley there was 
a certain enclosure walled off, and called ' the Tophet/ in which stood 
a number of altars and images. It was to this place that the children were 
brought for sacrifice. Jewish scholars, long after the beginning of our 
era, have represented the children as being burned alive, while the 
priests attempted to drown their shrieks with music. But this is incor- 
rect. The children were slaughtered just like other victims, and their 
blood was poured over the sacred stones. Then the bodies were brought 
to the image of Molech, which was probably in human form, with an 
ox's head, and its arms stretched out before it sloping downwards to- 
ward a hole filled with fire, into which the children rolled when laid 
upon the outstretched arms, while music was played in honor of the 
deity. It is difficult to make cut how far the Judaeans who sacrificed 
their children in the valley of the son of Hinnom distinguished between 
Molech and Jehovah, and in what relation the worship of the one 
stood to that of the other; but it is certain that these Molech worship- 
pers frequented the temple of Jehovah, invoked his name, and thought 
they were pleasing him when they sacrificed their children. Sacrifice 
to Molech was a part of the ancient Israelitish religions, as well as 
those of Canaan. The straits to which Judah was reduced in 
the reign of King Ahaz, induced that monarch to offer one of these 



48 WHA T IS THE BIBLE ? 

The Literature Heterogeneous. — Coming back now 
from this glance at the people from whom the litera- 
ture, gathered together in the Bible, came, what is the 
character of the literature ? 

As, in the very nature of the case is to be expect- 
ed, it is made up of a great variety of writings ; a 
great variety so far as matter is concerned, and also a 
great variety so far as style and quality of literary 
work is concerned. 

Earliest of all, under the name of history, we have 
a collection of legends, myths, traditions, accounts of 
persons, so far as can be found out purely imagin- 
ary.* Later, or farther on in the volume, we come 

frightful sacrifices (II. Kings xvi. 3), and perhaps it was he who built 
the Tophet. Under Hezekiah, the worship there was suspended, or 
at any rate it languished ; but it flourished more and more under King 
Manasseh, who led the way himself by sacrificing his first-born son. 
(II. Kings xxi. 6.) " 

All these facts give us a startling revelation not only of the exceed- 
ingly low beginnings of the Jewish religion, but also of its slow pro- 
gress, and the frequent terrible checks and reactions it experienced in 
its career. However, the splendid elevation it finally reached in some 
of its great teachers — as the Second Isaiah, Jesus and Paul — only be- 
comes the more wonderful because of the long road it had travelled, 
and the great obstacles it had been compelled to overcome. 

* Says Mr. Grote, in his preface to his History of Greece : " I de- 
scribe the earlier times by themselves, as conceived by the faith and 
feeling of the first Greeks, and known only through their legends, with- 
out presuming to measure how much or how little of historical matter 
these legends may contain. If the reader blame me for not assisting him 
to determine this, — if he ask me why I do not undraw the curtain and 
disclose the picture, — I reply in the words of the painter Zeuxis, when 



HEBREW LITERATURE MISCELLANEOUS. 49 

to real history, for a long time, however, ipixed with 
much that is legendary, but growing more and more 
firm and reliable as we come down the stream of time. 

the same question was addressed to him on exhibiting his masterpiece 
of imitative art : * The curtain is the picture.' What we now read as 
poetry and legend was once accredited history, and the only genuine 
history which the first Greeks could conceive or relish of their past 
time." 

This illustrates well the early condition, not simply of the Greeks, 
but also of nearly all other ancient peoples, the Hebrews included. It 
is only a little while since the vast back-ground of " shadowy times and 
persons " of early Greek legend and myth, was supposed to be, in large 
part at least, real history. So, too, it is only since Niebuhr that the 
legends of early Rome have been detached from Roman history. A 
hundred years ago the stories of Romulus and Remus, the elder 
Brutus, the Tarquins, the Horatius who 

" kept the bridge 
In the brave days of old," 

were all supposed to be reliable narratives of real persons and events 
But now no respectable historian thinks of treating them as anything 
else but legends. 

The same change in the method of treating early Hebrew history 
is rapidly making its appearance. The best writers are more and more 
distinguishing between the earlier period of legend (and perhaps also 
myth), and the later period of real history. Kuenen claims that the 
historical period cannot be carried back with any certainty beyond the 
eighth, or at the very farthest the ninth century B.C. " It is most 
clearly evident," he says, " that the Old Testament narratives of Isra- 
el's earliest fortunes are entirely upon a par with the accounts which 
other nations have handed down to us concerning their early history. 
That is to say: their principal element is legend. The remembrance 
of the great men and of the important events of antiquity was preserved 
by posterity. Transmitted from mouth to mouth it gradually lost its 
accuracy and precision, and adopted all sorts of foreign elements. The 

4 



So 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



Then, also, we find poetry of various kinds, as lyric, 
didactic and epic — and of all degrees of excellence. 

principal characteristics which legend shows among other ancient na- 
tions are found also among the Israelites." Religion of Israel, 
vol. i. p. 22. 

However, let us not understand that because what comes to us 
from the earlier ages of Israel's existence is so largely legendary, it is 
therefore valueless. No conclusion could be further from the truth. 
True, it has little value as history ; but history is not the only valua- 
ble form of literature in this world. In the poetry of a people, in 
the ballads and songs of a people, in the legends and traditions of a 
people, we often have a more precious legacy even than in their chron- 
icles. The poems of Homer reveal to us the Greek people of his time — 
their hopes and fears, loves and hates, joys and sorrows, aspirations, 
yearnings, worship — the whole world, indeed, of their deepest thoughts 
and feelings, as no mere historic narrative of facts could have done. 
The same is doubtless, to a considerable extent, true of the Old Testa- 
ment legends. They are products and survivals of what was deepest 
in the thoughts and feelings and beliefs of the old times which pre- 
ceded the birth of reliable history. 

See Kuenen, vol. i. pp. 12-27 ; Clodd's Childhood of Religion; 
Hedge's Primeval World of Hebrew Tradition; Max Miiller's Chips 
from a German Workshop, vol. ii. ; Ewald's History of Israel, vol. i. pp. 
1 1- 41, */ seq. For a collection of Legends of Old Testament characters, 
gathered from sources outside the Bible, see Baring-Gould's Book of 
Old Testament Legends. For Greek Legends, see Grote's History of 
Greece, vol. i. For a graphic account of the process by which legends 
have their birth or come into existence, see Macaulay's Introduction to 
his " Lays of Ancient Rome." For a discussion of the. mythical element 
in the Bible, see Goldziher's Hebrew Mythology ; also chapter on 
"The Mythical Element in the New Testament," in Dr. Hedge's 
" Ways of the Spirit." On the general subject of Myths, see Cox's 
Aryan Mythology ; Tyler's Primitive Culture, vol. i. ; Fiske's " Myths 
and Mythmakers." 



DATES OF BIBLE BOOKS. 



51 



We find also biographies ; collections of laws ; collec- 
tions of proverbs ; accounts of religious institutions 
and ceremonials ; religious utterances of various kinds 
— as of preacher and prophet ; and finally quite a 
large number and variety of epistles or letters on 
speculative and practical religious subjects. 

Difficulties in the Way of 'Fixing Dates. — Of course 
one of the first and most necessary questions to be 
asked is — When was this literature written ? This 
question, however, scholars find a very hard one to 
answer ; indeed, with regard to many of the books of the 
Bible, they find themselves as yet utterly unable to 
answer it. This grows partly out of the fact that the 
Jews were a small and very much isolated people, very 
little mentioned in the history and literature of other na- 
tions, so that we have few helps from outside in fixing 
the date of any event in Jewish history, whether it be 
the composition of a book of their Scriptures or any 
other. Then, again, it grows partly out of the fact 
that all Jewish writers seem themselves to have been 
very careless about their dates — very few of them 
leaving any data of any kind whereby their time 
of authorship can be more than approximately 
fixed. And finally, it grows largely out of the 
fact that Jewish literature is to so great an extent 
composite — not the product of any one time or one 
writer, but compiled from previously existing docu- 
ments. Says Matthew Arnold, speaking of the earlier 



52 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE J 



historical books : "To that collection many an old 
book had given up its treasures, and then itself van- 
ished forever. Many voices were blended there — un- 
known voices, speaking out of the early dawn." Prof. 
Robertson Smith, in his famous article on the Bible, 
in the Encyclopedia Britannica, after treating at 
some length of the great number of fragments from 
earlier documents that are found to have been woven 
into the historical books of the Old Testament, says : 
" And now a single word on the way in which these 
various elements, * * * dated from so various ages, 
came to be fused into a single history. The Se- 
mitic genius does not at all lie in the direction of 
organic structure. In architecture, in poetry, in his- 
tory, the Hebrew adds part to part, instead of devel- 
oping a single notion. The temple was an aggrega- 
tion of small cells ; the longest psalm is an acrostic ; 
and so the longest Biblical history is a stratification, 
and not an organism. This process was facilitated by 
the habit of anonymous writing, and the accompanying 
lack of all notion of anything like copyright." We are 
sometimes told of the exceeding care taken by the 
Jewish scribes in making copies of their Scriptures — 
going so far, it is said, as to count the words and 
letters in the copies they had made, to be sure that 
they had not left out or put in even a letter. It is 
true that after the completion of the Scripture canon, 
and the rise of the order of scribes, great care came 



LICENSE OF COPYISTS. 53 

to be exercised, finally, in copying. But this did not 
take place, at the very earliest, before about 100 B.C., 
if it did before the Christian era. Previously to 
that time, during all the ten centuries or more that 
elapsed while the books of the Old Testament were 
getting written and gathered together into an author- 
itative collection, there was no such carefulness. On 
the contrary there was a license exercised by copyists 
greater than, in our day, we have any conception of.* 
" If a man copied a book, it was his to add to and 
modify as he pleased, and he was not in the least 
bound to distinguish the old from the new. If he 
had two books before him to which he attached equal 

* Says Davidson: "As to Ezra's (458 B. C.) treatment of the 
Pentateuch * * it is safe to affirm that he added ; — making new 
precepts and practices either in place of or beside the old ones. He 
threw back several later enactments into earlier times. He did not 
scruple to refer to Moses what was of recent origin." " Canon of the 
the Bible," pp. 20, 21. "We know that in the captivity, and im- 
mediately after, older prophesies were edited. Men of prophetic ability 
wrote in the name of distinguished prophets, inserted new pieces in 
the productions of the latter, or adapted and wrote them over. The 
first thirty-five chapters of Isaiah, and L. and LI., of Jeremiah are an 
evidence of that." Ditto pp. 24, 25. " Like their predecessors of the 
great Synagogue, the Hasmonean rabbis revised the text freely, putting 
into it explanatory or corrective additions which were not always im- 
provements." Ditto p. 47. " After the last canon was made, about a 
century or more anterior to the Christian era, the text was not consid- 
ered inviolate by the learned Jews ; it received modifications and 
interpolations long after." Ditto p. 48. Also see Kuenen's Religion 
of Israel, vol. iii., pp. 6-9, 58-62. 



54 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

ed them by such additions or modifications as he 
felt to be necessary." " On such principles minor 
narratives were fused together, one after the other." 
Moreover, continues Prof. Smith : " In the poetical as 
well as in the historical books, anonymous writing is 
the rule ; and along with this we observe great free- 
dom on the part of the readers and the copyists, who 
not only made verbal changes but composed new 
poems out of fragments of others.* In a large part 
of the book of Psalms a later hand has substituted 
Elohim (God) for Jehovah. Still more remark- 
able is the case of the book of Job, in which the 
speeches of Elihu quite break the connection, and are 
almost universally assigned to a later hand." 

This curious combination of the functions of the 
copyist and the author is shown to have continued 
right on through a large part of the Old Testament. 
Indeed, the same thing re-appears in the New Testa- 
ment. Says Prof. Smith upon this point: " All the 
earliest external evidence points to the conclusion 
that the synoptic gospels are non-apostolic digests of 
spoken and written apostolic tradition, and that the 
arrangement of the earlier material in orderly form 
took place only gradually and by many essays."! 

* Compare Psalm cviii. with Psalms lvii. and lx. 

t This process of forming books out of other books and docu- 
ments, Ewald calls by the suggestive name of " book-compounding" 
For a most excellent account of the anonymous character of Hebrew 
literature (especially of Hebrew historic literature) and of the extent 



COMPILING FROM EARLIER DOCUMENTS. 55 

So that there is great vagueness, and in the very 
nature of the case there always must be great vague- 
ness and uncertainty, hanging over this whole subject 
of the time when the books of the Bible were written. 
And even if we could find out just when they first as- 
sumed their present form, then the further question 
would immediately rise with regard to that whole 
number which are confessedly compilations, viz., 
when were those earlier books or documents written 
from which the present books were made up ? 

Approximate Dates of the Earliest and Latest Old 
and New Testament Books. — The notion formerly held 
was that the first five books of the Old Testament were 
written by Moses, nearly fifteen hundred years before 
Christ. But, with the growth of modern scholarship, 
this idea has been steadily losing ground. Few of 
the best authorities now put the date of the composi- 
tion of these books (in the form in which they now 
appear) earlier than the reign of Manasseh (696-641 
B.C.) or of Josiah (636--609 B.C.). * Probably the old- 

to which this practice of " book-compounding " was carried, both in 
Old and New Testament times, see Ewald's History of Israel, vol. i., p. 
56-61. The Book of Esther (as Ewald affirms) is the only Old Testa- 
ment book which we may claim to have been preserved to us perfectly 
as it was first composed (p. 60). 

* Indeed it seems difficult to evade the arguments adduced by 
Kuenen to show that some passages relating to the ceremonial law 
were composed and inserted as late as the exile. See " Religion of 
Israel," vol. ii., pp.152, 153, 191 307. See also Knappert, chap- 
ters xvii. and xviii. 



5 6 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

est complete books of the Bible are the prophecies of 
Amos, Hosea and Micah.* These were written in 
the eighth century before Christ. 

The remaining Old Testament books were written 
between that time and a point of time which is very 
uncertain — fixed by different authorities anywhere 
from 400 to 100 B.C. 

Coming down to the New Testament, we find one 
class of critics fixing the dates of its various books 
between 50 and 100 A.D. ; while another class affirm 
that some must have been produced as late as A.D. 

175. 

In short, this at least is true : the various histories, 

biographies, poems, prophecies, letters, and produc- 
tions of one kind and another which make up this col- 
lection of literature called our Bible, was more than a 
thousand years in coming into existence ; some of the 
productions making their appearance (at least in sub- 
stance, if not in their present form) in the morning of 
Jewish civilization, as early in the nation's history as 
the nation had a literature at all ; while others did 
not come into being until the nation had passed 
through long and varied experiences of contact with 
some of the richest civilizations of the ancient world, 
including among others the Phoenician, the Assyrian, 
the Persian, the Greek and the Roman. 

Comparing the date of the origin of our own Sacred 

* Davidson says "Amos, Hosea and JM/ 9 



DATES OF OTHER SACRED BOOKS. 



57 



Scriptures with the date of the origin of the other 
great Sacred Scriptures of the world, we see from the 
foregoing that no part of our Scriptures can have been 
written so early by probably some centuries as the 
earliest portions of the Vedas and Zend Avesta, which 
are decided by the best authorities to have been pro- 
duced as far back as from iooo to 2000 B.C.* On 
the other hand, we see that certain portions of our 
Sacred Scriptures — the whole New Testament part, 
with possibly one or more books of the Old — were 
written considerably later than any of the other great 
Bibles except the Koran, which was not produced 
till the seventh century after Christ. 

Writers of the Books. — By whom were the various 
books or writings composed, that make up this litera- 
ture which we call our Bible ? To obtain an answer 
to this question the best scholarship of the past fifty 
years has put forth its most earnest and untiring ef- 
forts, but with little result. With regard to fully half 
the books we are as uncertain about who wrote them 
as about when they were written. What has already 
been said about the composite nature of many of the 
books, and the habit, seemingly so well-nigh universal 
among Jewish writers, of copying and compiling with- 

* Dr. Haug places the date of the earliest hymns of the Rig Veda 
at not later than 2400 B.C. For a brief discussion of the subject see 
Whitney's "Oriental and Linguistic Studies," pp. 21, 73, and Max 
Miiller's " Chips," vol. i., p. 11. 



S 8 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

out giving credit, goes far toward accounting for this. 
Speaking in a general way, ancient Jewish literature 
is an anonymous literature. To be sure, as we open 
our Bibles we find names of supposed authors at the 
head of a large proportion of the books. But we need 
to go only a very few steps in the direction of an ex- 
amination of the subject, before we find that the mere 
fact of finding a name attached to a book signifies lit- 
tle or nothing. Modern scholarship, as represented 
in Eichhorn, DeWette, Ewald, Davidson, Kuenen, 
and the ablest Biblical critics of the century, has made 
it certain that there are very few of the more import- 
ant books, especially of the Old Testament, that do 
not give evidence of more than one hand concerned 
in their authorship ; and often the different authors 
live in ages far apart. 

The Old Testament Books. — As to the Pentateuch, 
it has been already intimated that Moses cannot have 
been its author, at least in anything like the form in 
which it comes down to us. 

It is certainly a compilation. At least three dis- 
tinct documents, known among biblical students as 
the " Earlier Elohistic," the " Later Elohistic," and 
the " Jehovistic," are plainly traceable as running 
through it. * 

o 

* Davidson does not pat the date of the earliest Jehovistic docu- 
ment farther back than iooo B.C. Ewald fixes the date of the 
M Book of Origins M (the name given by him to the first extended histori- 



THE PENTATEUCH. 



59 



All five of the books must have been put in the 
form in which we now have them by some editor (or 
editors) living at least six or seven hundred years af- 
ter Moses. Who that editor was (or who those edi- 
tors were) we can only guess. There is steadily grow- 
ing doubt whether anything in either of the books 
may safely be assigned to Moses, or even to the time 
of Moses, except the ten commandments (in abridged 
form), and three or four other short fragments.* Deu- 

cal document that we can get distinct continuous traces of in the Old 
Testament narrative) at about the same period. (See Ewald's History 
of Israel, vol. i., pp. 63-96.) Thus we have an interval of five hundred 
years (see Kuenen, vol. i., pp. 17, 18) occurring between the time of 
Moses and the appearance of any written documents giving accounts 
of his deeds. How were these accounts preserved during these five 
hundred years ? They must have been preserved mainly by oral tra- 
dition* But if the events of the life of Moses came down for several 
centuries mainly by tradition, how must it be with the events which 
are said to have occurred long before Moses ? The Book of Genesis 
purports to narrate events which occurred from 300 to 2500 years 
earlier than Moses. Whence came the original records of these ? 
In attempting to answer, it may be well for us to bear in mind that 
these dates take us back to a period from 500 to 2500 years before the 
invention of a phonetic alphabet or the existence of anything which can 
properly be called writing. 

* The earliest things committed to writing among the Jews were 
probably the ten words proceeding from Moses himself, afterwards en- 
larged into the ten commandments which have come down to us in 
two versions differing in some particulars. (SeeExod. xx., and Deut. 
v.) It is also probable that several legal and ceremonial enactments 
belong, if not to Moses himself, at least to his time ; as also the list of 
stations in Numbers xxxiii. ; the Song of Miriam in Exodus xv. (prob- 
ably consisting of a few lines at first and subsequently enlarged) ; 



60 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

teronomy is distinct in authorship from Genesis, Exo- 
dus, Leviticus and Numbers ; although the author 
of Deuteronomy may possibly have been the last 
editor of the other four. 

Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings are compila- 
tions. Davidson thinks they may have been put in 
their present form by the writer of Deuteronomy. 

Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah seem to have been 
originally written as one book, at a very late date, 
probably not earlier than 400 B. C, or a hundred and 
thirty-six years after the return from the captivity ; 
but the name of the author (or compiler) we do not 
know. 

Esther was probably written about the same time 
— possibly in Persia. Its author is unknown. The 
book is entirely unreliable as history. 

The origin of the Book of job, as to author, time 
and place, is one of the great Bible-riddles. Most 
likely the book came into existence (except some few 
later additions) about the time of Josiah's reformation, 
a little before 600 B.C.; but from whom we have no 
data for judging. 

The Psalms were written by many different per- 
sons, — all the way from David down to the time of the 
Maccabees — between 175 and 100 B.C. How many 

and the triumphal ode over the fall of Heshbon (Numbers xxi. 27-30). 
These fragments probably comprise all in our Bible that comes down 
from Moses' time. (Davidson.) 



AUTHORSHIP OF OLD TESTAMENT BOOKS. 6 1 

are from the pen of David cannot be definitely known ; 
it is certain, however, that the number is comparatively 
small. David was the greatest name among the psalm- 
writers of Israel, and hence the tendency was to as- 
cribe to him psalms which really did not come from 
him ; just as the tendency was to ascribe to the great 
prophets, as Isaiah and Jeremiah, prophecies which did 
not come from them ; and to Solomon proverbs which 
he did not write ; and to Moses laws which had their 
origin many centuries later than Moses. 

The Book of Proverbs is probably the work of many 
writers. It seems to be made up of four or five dis- 
tinct collections, and may have assumed its present 
form during the reign of King Hezekiah. How many 
of the proverbs are from Solomon it is impossible to 
tell. The book takes the name of Solomon doubtless 
because he is the greatest of those who contributed 
to it.* 

The Canticles (called the Song of Solomon) was 
probably not written by Solomon ; though it may pos- 
sibly have come from near his time. 

Ecclesiastes most likely (Kuenen says certainly) 
comes from a time subsequent to the Babylonish 
exile ; and therefore cannot of course be from the 
pen of Solomon. 

Lamentations comprises five songs of mourning, 

* It is said that the Greeks ascribed most of their sententious 
maxims to Pythagoras ; the Arabs theirs to Lokman and a few others ; 
the Northern nations theirs to King Odin. (Noyes.) 



62 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

in which the deplorable condition of Judah and Jeru- 
salem, after they have been conquered by Nebuchad- 
nezzar, is depicted. The five songs are by different 
authors. 

The Prophecies are less anonymous than any other 
parts of the Old Testament, though critics do not 
by any means agree as to the authorship of all the 
prophetical books. 

Beyond question the book of Isaiah was written 
by at least two, and probably more than two, different 
writers. Since Gesenius the latter part of the book — 
from chapter xl. to the end — has been assigned by al- 
most all the most distinguished commentators to a 
great unknown prophet writing near the close of the 
exile at Babylon. Many of the earlier chapters of 
the book, also, it is conceded, cannot have come from 
the pen of Isaiah.* 

Perhaps no one of the so-called prophetical books 
has given rise to more controversy than the book of 
Daniel. Who wrote it, it is impossible to tell. The 
best authorities are, however, coming to be more and 

* " Chapters xxxvi. to xxxix., which embrace historical narra- 
tives, especially that of Sennacherib's invasion of Judah, belong to a 
later author. Chapters xl. to lxvi. are by a prophet at the time of 
the captivity, whom we generally call, for want of any other name, the 
second Isaiah. Probably, these prophecies were not collected together 
till after the fall of Babylon. The following passages, too, belong to 
later times: Chapters xiii. I, to xiv. 23; xxi. 1 to 10; xxiv. to 
xxvii. ; xxxiv. to xxxv. Though they cannot all be ascribed to one 
author, they all belong to the days of the captivity." Knappert, p. 13. 



AUTHORS OF SCRIPTURE BOOKS. 63 

more agreed, that it was probably produced not within 
the period of the Captivity at all, as has been supposed, 
but two or three centuries later, during the time of 
the Maccabees ; and therefore that its author cannot 
have been Daniel. 

The Book of Zechariah is worthy of especial men- 
tion because of the fact that it contains utterances 
from three different prophets. Says Knappert : " The 
first of these wrote chapters i. to viii. He was 
really the latest of the three, and a contemporary of 
Haggai. The second author, a contemporary of Amos, 
Hosea and Isaiah, wrote chapters ix. to xi. The 
third prophet, who was the author of chapters xii. to 
xiv., lived shortly before the destruction of Jerusa- 
lem, at the same time with Jeremiah and Habakkuk. 
It is not improbable that it was the similarity of name 
of the three prophets that led to their writings being 
united in a single book." # 

Who wrote the New Testament Books ? — Passing 
on to the New Testament we find a condition of 
things not materially different from what we have 

* For a remarkably clear account of the probable dates and author- 
ship of the various Old Testament books, see Knappert's " Religion of 
Israel," chapters i., ii. and iii. This account coincides with the views 
of Kuenen, and differs only a little from the views of Davidson. See 
Davidson's " Canon of the Bible," Chapter ii. and " Introduction to 
the Old Testament." Ewald is somewhat more conservative, and as a 
rule fixes the dates a little earlier ; yet his main conclusions do not 
differ widely from the views of Knappert, Kuenen and Davidson. 



64 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

discovered in the Old. The authors of some of the 
books can be ascertained, the authors of others can- 
not. First of all we come to the Gospels. Asking 
the question — Who wrote these ? we are at once in 
difficulty. 

How and by whom they came into existence we 
cannot even begin to understand until we get clearly 
in mind the fact that oral tradition preceded any writ- 
ten Gospel record. " For a considerable period this 
tradition was the only source of information as to the 
fortunes and the teachings of Jesus. It was but nat- 
ural that as long as Jesus was living no one should 
think of writing an account of his words and deeds. 
And even during the twenty or thirty years or so 
after his death, when his disciples were preaching 
him as the Christ to an ever wider circle, though the 
want of such gospels must soon have made itself 
generally felt, no one undertook to write one. For 
the Christians expected Jesus himself to return ere 
long from heaven, and what would then be the use 
of a written record of his former life ? 

"It was not till the expectation of the return 
of Jesus had fallen somewhat into the back-ground 
that such a task could be taken up with affectionate 
zeal. And meanwhile the oral tradition had already 
taken a tolerably settled form in the various circles 
of Christians. In an age when reading and writing 
were less common than they are at present, the 






ORIGIN OF THE GOSPELS. 



65 



memory was much more tenacious, and words were 
remembered with greater accuracy. Detached ac- 
counts as well as whole sets of narratives refer- 
ring to the labors of Jesus in Galilee, his journey to 
Jerusalem, his stay in the city, and his death were 
current amongst the Christians. His parables and 
his aphorisms, and his more elaborate discourses 
were also passed from mouth to mouth, sometimes 
in connection with some event and sometimes quite 
detached. One of the early fathers tells us that the 
apostle Matthew wrote a collection of ' Sayings of 
the Lord,' in Hebrew. This collection has probably 
been taken up into our first Gospel, which is specially 
rich in sayings of Jesus ; and it may be from this fact 
that it derives its title ' according to Matthew.' " * 

The Gospels as "Mosaics?' — As soon as we come 
to understand the foregoing facts, it no longer seems 
strange to us that the authors of the different Gos- 
pels cannot be certainly ascertained. They cannot 
be certainly ascertained because at least three of the 
four Gospels can have had no real authors, as we 
usually understand that word. They are the work 
of editors ; they are compilations ; they are " mo- 
saics ; " — the material which enters in to make them 
up being real utterances of Jesus, real events of his 
life, together with more or less of legendary elements 

* Bible for Young People, vol. v., pp. 37, 38 

5 



66 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

and deviations from historic facts, occasioned by the 
lapse of years and the necessary imperfection of the 
human memory.* 

" Our first two gospels appear to have passed 
through more than one revision. The third, whose 
writer says in his preface that ' many had undertaken 
to put together a narrative (gospel)' before him, ap- 
pears to proceed from a single collecting, arranging, 
and modifying hand." f Was that hand the hand of 
Luke ? Were the compilers of the first and second 
Gospels, Matthew and Mark ? Did the different Gos- 
pels receive no additions or glosses or alterations 
from later hands, after the last real editors or com- 

* " Every historic religion, that has won for itself a place in the 
world's history, has evolved from a core of fact a nimbus of legen- 
dary matter which criticism cannot always separate, and which the 
popular faith does not seek to separate. * * Christianity, like every 
other religion, has its mythology (or legends), so intertwined with 
the veritable facts of its early history, so braided and welded with its 
first beginnings, that the myth and legend are not always distinguish- 
able from the history. * * Yet the mythical (or legendary) interpre- 
tation of certain portions of the gospels has no appreciable bearing on 
the character of Christ. The impartial reader of the record must see 
that the evangelists did not invent the character ; they did not make 
the Jesus of their story ; on the contrary, it was he that made them. It 
is a true saying that only a Christ could invent a Christ." Hedge's 
" Ways of the Spirit," pp. 319, 340. The whole chapter (" The 
Mythical Element in the New Test.") is full of thought, and will well 
repay perusal by any who care to understand how independent is 
moral and spiritual truth of its setting or form of expression, 
t Bible for Young People, vol. v., p. yj" 



ORIGIN OF THE GOSPELS. 67 

pilers had done their work of putting them in the 
general form that we have now ? * Upon ail these 
questions our best scholars differ, and very likely 
always will. We do not seem to have sufficient data 
for the formation of a judgment that shall be much 
more than conjecture. A great deal can be said, and 
said honestly on both sides. 

Passing to the Gospel of John, we are confronted 
with quite as great difficulties as those that meet us 
in connection with the other three.f Regarding the 

* It is agreed by almost all authorities that the following pas- 
sages, among others, are such later additions : Matt. vi. 13, Mark 
xvi. 9-20, Luke ix. 55, 56 (in part), John v. 3, 4 ; John viii. 1-11. 

t The literature of this whole subject is immense, and constantly 
increasing. There are no better authorities than the Introduction to 
the New Testament by Davidson, De Wette, and Bleek. For a very 
brief but candid statement of a few of the more important points of 
the discussion, see Prof. Smith's article on the Bible, in the Encyclo- 
pedia Britannica. 

For an admirable statement, in condensed and yet popular form, of 
the arguments adduced to prove that the apostle John cannot have 
been the author of the fourth Gospel, see Frothingham's " Cradle of 
Christ," Chapter vii. In the same chapter and Chapter viii., are also 
ably epitomized the theory of Baur (which it must be confessed is 
coming to have no little weight among scholars), that the New Testa- 
ment literature as it comes down to us is, to a very large extent at least, 
the product of an early and very deep estrangement that sprung up in 
the Christian church between the more catholic Pauline party, who 
would put the Gentile Christians on a level with the Jewish Christians, 
and the more narrow and exclusive Petrine party, who would give 
the Jewish Christians a very decided precedence. For the most thor- 
ough and exhaustive works of New Testament criticism that have yet 
appeared in English (translation), see Keim's "Jesus of Nazara ; " 



68 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

authorship of the fourth Gospel, scholarship can 
hardly be affirmed to have reached anything yet that 
even approximates a decision. About all that can 
be said is that among all the more candid critics there 
seems to be a steadily growing tendency toward the 
judgment that at least the same author cannot have 
written the fourth Gospel and the Apocalypse. 

The Acts and the Epistles. The book of Acts is 
almost certainly, to some extent, a compilation. Con- 
servative scholars say the compiler was Luke ; an 
affirmation which the most advanced scholars of the 
radical school dispute. 

Following our present order of New Testament 
books, we come next to the epistles. 

Probably the earliest-written of the New Testament 
books are some of the Epistles of Paul. These are 
doubtless older than the gospels, although fragments 
or parts of the Gospels are very likely older than any- 
thing from Paul. Moreover, some of the Pauline 
epistles, are the most certainly authentic of the New 
Testament writings. However, there is doubt as 
to the authorship of a few of them. In one (II. 
Thessalonians, ii. 2), it is intimated that even during 
the apostle's lifetime, letters of which he had not writ- 
ten a word, were published under his name. The 
Epistle to the Hebrews was almost certainly not writ- 

Baur's " Paul ; " Zeller's " Acts of the Apostles ; " and Bleek's u Lec- 
tures on the Apocalypse." 



BIBLE WRITERS, 69 

ten by Paul ; who was its author can only be conjec- 
tured. Such authorities as Baur and Zeller hold that 
of the fourteen epistles usually ascribed to Paul we 
cannot be certain that he wrote more than four, viz. : 
Romans, First and Second Corinthians, and Galatians. 

Second Peter, Second and Third John, James, 
Jude and Revelation (or the Apocalypse), have long, 
and by great numbers of writers, been considered 
doubtful as to authorship. 

Character of the Atithors of both the Old Testament 
and the New as Revealed in their Writings. — What was 
the character of the writers of the various books of 
the Bible, so far as we know who those writers were, 
and so far as we can ascertain their character from 
their writings ? They were men of very different 
mental ability, very different degrees of culture, very 
different moral worth, very different degrees of re- 
ligiousness and spiritual insight, very different hab- 
its and associations and tastes. They were represen- 
tatives of all phases of the progress and mutations of 
Jewish civilization for a thousand years. They re- 
veal in their writings all the changes which human 
thought naturally undergoes in so long a period. 
What one book asserts, another not unfrequently 
denies ; or what one enjoins, another not unfrequently 
forbids. 

As brief illustrations, contrast the following pas- 
sages : 



70 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



"If a man cause a blemish to his "Recompense no man evil for evil." 

neighbor, as he hath done so shall it be Romans xii. 17. 

done to him, breach for breach, eye for " Whosoever shall smite thee on thy 

eye, tooth for tooth." Leviticus xxiv. right cheek, turn to him the other also. 

19, 20. Love your enemies, bless them that 

" Thine eye shall not pity ; but life curse you, do good to them that hate 

shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for you, and pray for them that despiteful] y 

tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot." use you, and persecute you." Matt. v. 44. 
Deut. xix. 21. 

Progress hi Conception of God. — There is vast 
change, advance, we may almost say revolution, in the 
conception of God which appears in the various 
writings as we go forward from the earlier part of the 
Old Testament to the later, and especially as we go 
forward to the New Testament. The earlier writers 
of the Old Testament represent God as walking, talk- 
ing, having bodily form, " wrestling with one patriarch, 
eating veal and cakes with another, contending and 
for a while in vain with the magic of other Gods," 
getting angry, being jealous, repenting, sanctioning 
fraud, commanding cruelty, and exhibiting almost 
every passion and imperfection of man. But as we 
advance this tends to pass away. Long before we 
leave the Old Testament we find the conceptions of 
Him, entertained by writers, greatly elevated and 
purified. Not, however, until we come into the New 
Testament, to Paul and John and Jesus, is the change 
completed. Once arrived here, the twilight is gone, 
and we have reached at last the full day. 

The earliest conception of God that we find among 
the Jews (indeed it does not entirely disappear until 



THE GOD OF THE HEBREWS. 71 

near the time of the Captivity) is, not that their God, 
Jehovah, was the only God, but that he was one 
of many gods, though superior to the rest. Thus 
we have the passage (Exodus xv. 11), "Who is like 
unto thee, Jehovah, amo7ig the GodsV Again (I. 
Kings, viii. 23), "There is no God like thee, in heaven 
above or in the earth beneath/' When Moses by 
Jehovah's command repairs to Pharaoh to demand that 
he let Israel go, the former does not represent Jehovah 
as the one sole God of the universe ; he simply repre- 
sents him as the " God of the Hebrews!' In the de- 
livery of the Commandments at Mt. Sinai, God is not 
represented as saying " I am the only God ; there is 
no god but me" Instead of that we have him declaring 
u I am the Lord thy God ;" " thou shalt have no other 
Gods before me " — at least tolerating the idea that 
there were other gods of other peoples, whom these 
other peoples might worship, but they (the Hebrews) 
must worship yehovah their God. And all along down 
the history of the Jews * for many hundreds of years 
we keep coming upon lapses of the people into idolatry: 
but these lapses are never called atheism, as surely 
they would have been if Jehovah had been regarded 
as the only God, they are simply called infidelity or 
unfaithfulness to their own national God, who had 
brought them up out of Egypt, and done so much for 

* See "above, p. 45, note. Also see Greg's " Creed of Christen- 
dom," vol. L, pp. 103-108. 



72 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

them, and whom they were therefore under obligation 
to worship. 

To show as clearly as I may what advance there is 
in the conceptions of God held by various writers as 
we come down into the later ages of the Old Testa- 
ment, I will place side by side a few passages. 

First I select two which represent God as having 
a local habitation and a bodily form, putting beside 
these two or three others which portray him as a spirit, 
without form or locality. 

11 And it came to pass, as Moses en- " But will God in very deed dwell on 

tered into the tabernacle, that the cloudy the earth ? Behold the Heaven, and the 

pillar descended, and stood at the door of Heaven of Heavens, cannot contain thee : 

the tabernacle ; and Jehovah talked with how much less this house that I have 

Moses. — And Jehovah spake unto Moses builded! " I. Kings viii. 27. 

face to face, as a man speaketh unto a " Whither shall I go from thy Spirit I 

friend." Exod. xxxiii. 9, 11. or whither shall I flee from thy presence ? 

" And Jehovah said, Behold there is a If I ascend up into heaven, thou art 

place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a there ; if I make my bed in hell, behold 

rock. And it shall come to pass, while thou art there. If I take the wings of 

my glory passeth by, that I will put thee the morning, and dwell in the uttermost 

in a cleft of the rock, and will cover thee parts of the sea, even there shall thy 

with my hand while I pass by ! And I hand lead me, and thy right hand shall 

will take away mine hand, and thou hold me." Psalm cxxxix. 7, 8. 
shalt see my back parts ; but my face 
shall not be seen." Exod. xxxiii. 21- 



The following passages show how different were 
the conceptions of the moral nature of God held by 
different Old Testament writers. 

" The Lord hath put a lying spirit in " The word of the Lord is right, and 

the mouth of these thy prophets." II. all his works are done in truth." Psalm 
Chron. xviii. 22. xxxiii. 4. 



DIFFERENT CONCEPTIONS OF GOD. 73 

11 The Lord said unto Moses, Speak " Lying lips are an abomination to 

now in the ears of the people, and let the Lord ; but they that deal truly are 

every man borrow of his neighbor, and his delight." Prov. xii. 22. 
every woman of her neighbor jewels of " Lord who shall abide in thy taber- 

silver and jewels of gold. And the Lord nacle ? who shall dwell in thy holy hill ? 

gave the people favor in the sight of the He that walketh uprightly, and worketh 

Egyptians, so that they lent unto them. righteousness, and speaketh the truth in 

And they spoiled the Egyptians." Exo- his heart. Psalm xv. 1, 2. 
dus iii. 21, 22. xi. 2, 3 ; xii. 35» 36. 

I quote next two or three of the large number of 
passages which command burnt offerings and sacri- 
fices, and represent God as delighting in these things ; 
placing opposite them two or three of that other large 
number of passages which represent God as having no 
interest in any offerings or sacrifices but those of the 
human heart. The former class of passages are, as a 
rule, earlier in time than the latter, as would appear 
more plainly if the books of the Old Testament followed 
each other in the order of their age. Moreover, the 
former class are, as a rule, from the priests, and the 
latter from the prophets — it being everywhere char- 
acteristic of the priests and prophets respectively that 
the religious teachings of the former are comparatively 
crude, narrow, full of bondage to the letter, wanting 
in such lofty moral and spiritual utterances as are found 
everywhere in the latter. 

"And Noah offered burnt offerings "Thou desirest not sacrifice, else 

on the altar. And the Lord smelled a would I give it ; thou delightest not in 
sweet savor ; and the Lord said in his burnt offering." Psalm li. 16. 
heart, I will not again curse the ground 
any more for man's sake." Gen. viii. 
20, 21. 



74 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



" Ye shall offer the burnt offering for " I delight not in the blood of bullocks, 

a sweet savor unto the Lord." Num. or of lambs, or of he-goats." Isaiah i, n. 

xxviii. 27. " Wherewith shall I come before the 

"Ye shall offer a burnt offering, a Lord? Will the Lord be pleased with 
sacrifice made by fire, of a sweet savor thousands of rams, and ten thousand 
unto the Lord, thirteen bullocks, two rivers of oil? What doth Jehovah re- 
rams, and fourteen lambs." Numbers quire of thee but to do justly, to love 
xxix. 13. mercy, and to humbly walk with thy 

God?" Micahv. 6-8. 

However, as I have already intimated, it is not till 
we reach the New Testament, and Jesus the greatest 
of the prophets, that we find the very highest concep- 
tion of God. This we doubtless have in these words 
of Jesus : " Our Father who art in heaven ; " and 
these : " God is a Spirit ; and they that worship him 
must worship him in spirit and in truth." 

Belief in a Future Life makes its Appearance. — The 
doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul does not ap- 
pear in the first half of the Old Testament. Even so 
cautious and conservative a writer as Dean Stanley 
admits this. Indeed, it does not seem too strong to 
say that the doctrine is positively denied by some 
of the Old Testament writers, for we read from the 
pen of the author of Ecclesiastes such words as these : 
" The dead know not anything, neither have they any 
reward." "That which befalleth the sons of men be- 
falleth beasts — even one thing befalleth them ; as one 
dieth, so dieth the other ; yea, they have all one 
breath, so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a 
beast." 

When the idea of immortality does appear, it is 



GROV/TH OF RELIGIOUS IDEAS. 75 

only in a vague and indefinite way until we reach the 
end of the Old Testament, though it had received 
some impulse from the Persians during the captivity. 
The doctrine seems to have come into general popu- 
lar belief among the Jews during the interval elapsing 
between the close of the Old Testament and the open- 
ing of the New. As soon as we reach the New Tes- 
tament, we find it shining from almost every page. 
Perhaps there is no teaching of the New Testament 
more conspicuous than that of a future life. 

Belief Iji a Devil and a Hell — The doctrines of 
the Devil and of Hell are absent from all those parts 
of the Bible written before the Captivity. These two 
doctrines seem to have come into Judaism from the 
religion of the Persians, with whom the Jews came 
into very close contact during their exile.* 

Thus we see that there is change in thought and 
doctrine and conception of things touching religion, 
manifest in the Bible from first to last. Generally it 
is progress, though not always so ; sometimes it is 
retrogression. And any one, therefore, who reads 
this varied literature of a thousand years, expecting to 
find the same teachings, or even always necessarily 
harmonious teachings, in it, from beginning to end, as 
regards God, and man, and duty, and the present life, 
and the life to come, and the great doctrines of relig- 
ion generally, is expecting something which does not 

* See Knappert, pp. 173-4. 



ye WHAT IS THE BIBLE f 

exist, and indeed which, in the nature of the case, 
would be an impossibility. Almost as well might one 
read the literature of Rome for a thousand years, and 
expect to find, from first to last, through kingdom, re- 
public, and empire, the same social and political ideas 
prevailing ; or the literature of England for a thou- 
sand years, and expect to find there, in all that time, 
no changes and antagonisms of thought and belief 
manifesting themselves in religion, philosophy, poli- 
tics, social affairs. 

Relative worth of the Different Books. — Are all 
the books of the Bible of equal value ? I reply — To 
be sure they are not. How can they be ? Can a 
book like Genesis or Exodus, made up largely of 
legends, be of equal value as history, with a later 
book which really is history, and can be verified ? 
Can a book like Chronicles, or Kings, or Judges, 
or Joshua, made up of records of bloody and inhu- 
man wars, be of equal value with a biography of 
Jesus? Can the Song of Solomon* — an amatory 

* The voluptuous imagery of the Song of Solomon has been very 
generally interpreted allegorically by Christians to signify the perfect 
union of Christ with his bride the Church. In like manner, spiritually- 
minded Hindoos were accustomed to consider all descriptions of sexual 
love in their Sacred Books, as typical of complete absorption of the 
human soul in the Supreme Soul of the universe. " Progress of Re- 
ligious Ideas/' vol. iii. pp. 300, 301. 

Dr. Adam Clarke, the great Methodist commentator, speaking of 
those who attach a spiritual meaning to the book, says : " Their con- 
duct is dangerous; and the result of their well-intentioned labors has 
been of very little service to the cause of Christianity in general, or to 



DROSS WITH THE GOLD. 



77 



poem which the author of Don Juan or of Laus 
Veneris might well blush to have written, be weighed 
over against such grand and noble books as Job and 

the interests of true morality in particular. By their mode of inter- 
pretation, an undignified, not to say mean and carnal, language has 
been propagated among many well-meaning religious people, that has 
associated itself too much with selfish and animal affections. In it (the 
Song of Solomon) I see nothing of Christ and his church, and nothing 
that appears to have been intended to be thus understood." 

Says Prof. Noyes : 

" Certain interpreters tell us that the work expresses the mutual 
love of Jehovah and the Hebrew nation, or of Christ and the Church, 
or of God and the individual soul. In opposition to this, it is enough 
to say, that it is mere fancy ; that there is not the slightest allusion to 
God, to Christ, to the Church, or to the soul of man as related to 
God, in the whole book. We find in it only lovers and maidens ; the 
praise of personal beauty and passionate expressions of love ; lovers 
conversing with each other, placed in different scenes, eating, drink- 
ing, sleeping, embracing, running, climbing, visiting gardens, feeding 
flocks, in fine, all that is usually found in amatory poetry. To me 
it appears singular, that any one should think it to be for the honor 
of the book, or of the Jewish religion, or of the Bible, to regard the 
Canticles (Song of Solomon) as designed to be a book of devotion. 
If it be regarded as a specimen of the erotic poetry of the Hebrews, 
it will be treated with indifference by most readers, and consequently 
do no harm. But, if regarded as an inspired model and help to devo- 
tion, its tendency is injurious to morals and religion." Noyes' " In- 
troduction to the Canticles." See this introduction for a full and 
thorough discussion of the moral and religious character of the 
poem. 

We have it on the authority of Jerome that the early church would 
not allow their young people to read the Song of Solomon until they 
were thirty years old. Progress of Religious Ideas, vol. iii. p. 300. 
The Jews placed it among their interdicted books, or books "with- 
drawn from ordinary use." Noyes, p. 154. 



78 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

Isaiah, full of conceptions of God and man and duty, 
as lofty as can be found in literature ? To look at 
the time and circumstances of the origin of the vari- 
ous books is to answer the question whether all can 
be of equal value. Certainly, to look for a single 
moment, candidly and without bias, at the books 
themselves, is to answer it beyond a peradventure. 

Other Scriptures besides those preserved to us. — 
Are the books and writings which we have bound 
together in our Bible all the writings that were pro- 
duced among the Jewish people during this thousand 
years ? And if not, why were not the rest gath- 
ered and included in our Bible with what we now 
have ? 

The first of these questions I have partly an- 
swered in what I have said about many of the Bible 
books being made up to a greater or less extent of 
compilations, and extracts from other books. Both 
questions, however, demand further consideration. 

It seems that there are no less than sixteen books 
missing from the Old Testament which clearly ought 
to be there ; at least which are referred to in one 
place or another in the Bible as if they were genu- 
ine and true Old Testament books.* 

The Prophecy of Enoch is referred to in Jude 
14, 15. 

* See McClintock and Strong's " Cyclopedia of Biblical Litera- 
ture," Article " Apocrypha" 



MISSING OLD TESTAMENT BOOKS. 79 

The Book of the Wars of the Lord is referred 
to in Numbers xxi. 14. 

The Book of Jasher (Joshua x. 13, and II. 
Samuel i. 18). 

The Book of the Manner of the Kingdom, written 
by Samuel (I. Samuel x. 25). 

The Books of Nathan and Gad concerning King 
David (I. Chron. xxix. 29). 

The Book of the Acts of Solomon (I. Kings xi. 

4 i). 

Of the remaining ten I will simply give the 
names. They are : 

The Books of Nathan, Ahijah and Iddo. 

Solomon's Parables, Songs and Treatises on 
Natural History. 

The Book of Seraiah. 

The Book of Jehu. 

The Book of Isaiah concerning King Uzziah. 

The Words of the Seers. 

The Book of Lamentations over King Uriah. 

The Volume of Jeremiah burned by Jehudi. 

The Chronicle of the Kings of Judah. 

The Chronicle of the Kings of Israel. 

I say all these sixteen Old Testament books, 
mentioned in various places in the Bible as 
genuine and true, are now lost, or supposed to be 
lost. 

Then, there are fourteen books called Apocryphal 



80 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

— which are extant ; which the Roman Catholic 
Church claims belong properly to the Old Testament, 
and prints as a part of the Old Testament. We, 
however, as Protestants, take the responsibility of 
casting them out ; though now and then a Bible 
falls into our hands (generally a large family or pul- 
pit Bible) which contains these Apocryphal books. 
Whether they ought to be cast out or included is a 
question upon which the Christian world is about 
evenly divided. 

Coming to the New Testament, the difficulty 
does not grow less. In connection with this part of 
the Bible there are no fewer than forty-one apocry- 
phal books (" psendepigraphal" books they are more 
generally called), now in existence. I give the titles 
of a few ; indicating the language in which ancient 
copies have been preserved. 

The General Epistle of Barnabas. (Greek.) 

The First Epistle of Clement to the Corin- 
thians. (Greek.) 

The Second Epistle of Clement to the Corin- 
thians. (Greek.) 

The Descent of Christ into Hell. (Greek and 
Latin.) 

The Apostolic Constitutions. (Greek, Ethiopic 
and Coptic.) 

The First, Second and Third Book of Hermas. 
(Greek and Latin.) 



NEW TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA. 8 1 

The Epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians. 
(Greek and Latin.) 

The Gospel of the Infancy of the Saviour. 
(Arabic and Latin.) 

The Narrative of Joseph of Arimathaea. (Greek.) 

The Gospel of the Nativity of St. Mary. (Latin.) 

The Acts of Pilate. (Greek and Latin.) 

In addition to this list of forty-one works now 
extant \ we find another list of apocryphal (or pseu- 
depigraphal) New Testament books, sixty-eight in 
number, not now extant, but which are mentioned 
by writers of the first four centuries after Christ as 
existing at that time. Among these we find such 
titles as : 

The Acts of Andrew. 

The Gospel according to the Twelve Apostles. 

The Gospel of Bartholomew. 

The Epistle of Christ to Peter and Paul. 

The Acts of John. 

The Gospel according to the Hebrews. 

Here then is the answer that we find to our ques- 
tion — Are the books, or writings, which we have 
bound up together in our Bible, all the writings that 
were produced during the thousand years of time over 
which our Old and New Testaments extend ? 

As to the further questions — If there were so 
many other books produced, how do we know that 

6 



82 WHAT IS THE BIBLE f 

the books which we have in our Bible, are just the 
ones that ought to be there? How do we know 
but that some of the others ought to be in, and that 
some of those which are in ought to be out ? — I say 
as to these questions, we can only answer — we do 
not know. 

The Formation of the Old Testament Canon. — 
How the canon of the Old Testament was settled, no 
one can tell. When or by whom it was settled, no 
one can tell. Indeed, it never was settled at all. The 
first step toward the formation of a canon seems to 
have been taken by Ezra, in the fifth century before 
Christ. From this time, various influences, oftener 
indefinite than definite, conspired to carry it forward. 
By the time of Jesus it had, somehow or other, come 
to be about what it has since remained. And yet 
there seems never to have been a time previous to 
the establishment of Christianity when the Jews were 
at all perfectly agreed among themselves as to which 
books were properly canonical. And certainly since 
that time there has been no period when the Christian 
church has been at all unanimous upon the subject. 
Indeed, as I have already said, one-half the Christian 
world, to-day, contends that the fourteen extant apoc- 
ryphal books of the Old Testament ought to be in- 
cluded as a true part of the Old Testament, and 
actually publishes them in its Bible as such ; while 
the other half casts them out as spurious. 



CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 83 

Formation of the New Testament Canon. — As to 
the New Testament canon, that was never settled 
only in a most haphazard and utterly inadequate way. 
Up to the beginning of the second century, no one 
seemingly ever thought of such a thing as any writings 
ever being regarded as Sacred Scripture, except the 
Old Testament writings.* For a long time after the 
gospels and various epistles came into existence, they 
were much less esteemed than the Old Scriptures. 
Indeed, up to about the middle of the second century 
they were not so highly esteemed "as the oral tradi- 
tions of the churches in which any of the apostles 
had preached. By the close of the second century, 
however, a change appears. Certain New Testament 
books have come into more general favor than the 
rest, and are beginning to be classed to a certain ex- 
tent by themselves as a new collection of Sacred Scrip- 
tures. As time goes on, they grow more and more 
into use among the churches. Yet for centuries the 
various churches continued to use, side by side with the 
writings which make up our New Testament to-day, 
various books which we call spurious. It is curious 
to note that hardly one of the great writers and 

* For a full account of the formation of the Canon of the Old and 
New Testaments, see " The Canon of the Bible," by Davidson : or the 
article on the " Canon " in the Encyclopedia Britannica. For views of 
the more conservative school of writers, see " The Canon of the New 
Testament," by Westcott. 



84 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

"Fathers" of the early church draws the line of can- 
onicity of New Testament books just where we draw 
it. In almost every case they either include some 
books that we reject, or else reject some books that 
we include. For example, Irenaeus, one of the earliest 
and most authoritative, rejects five books which we 
have now in the New Testament, viz. : Hebrews, 
Jude, James, II. Peter, III. John ; while he puts great 
value upon the " Shepherd of Hennas/' one of the 
so-called apocryphal books which we reject, and calls 
it " Scripture." Again, Clement classes the three 
apocryphal books — to wit, the " Apocalypse of Peter," 
the " Epistle of Barnabas," and the " Shepherd of 
Hermas " — as of equal value and authority with our 
three New Testament books, to wit ; Hebrews, II. 
John and Jude. The celebrated Tertullian cast out 
all the books of the New Testament, except the four 
Gospels, Acts, thirteen epistles of Paul, the Revela- 
tion and I. John. Even Athanasius quotes a number 
of the apocryphal books as of equal value and inspira- 
tion with those which are included in our present 
canon. Origen (in the third century) says that " the 
churches use Tobit " — an apocryphal work. Jerome, 
late in the fourth century, quotes the apocryphal book, 
Sirach, as Scripture, remarking that it is in the 
Christian catalogue. 

It is claimed by some that the Council of Laodi- 
cea (363 A. D.) settled the canon finally; but this, 



SETTLEMENT OF THE CANON. 85 

Davidson, our highest English authority on the sub- 
ject, denies. Says Davidson : " Notwithstanding the 
numerous endeavors both in the East and West to 
settle the canon during the fourth and fifth centu- 
ries, it was not finally closed. The doubts of individ- 
uals were still expressed, and succeeding ages testify 
to the want of universal agreement respecting several 
books." Indeed, if that council did settle what books 
properly belong in the Old and New Testaments, then 
we are wrong to-day in not including Baruch in our Old 
Testament, and in retaining Revelation in our New. 
Moreover, if, as is sometimes claimed, the Council of 
Carthage (A. D. 397 ?) settled the canon, then we are 
wrong in not including Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom, To- 
bit, Judith, and First and Second Maccabees in our 
present Bible. 

Indeed the Romanists allow that the canon was 
not settled until the modern Council bf Trent, held in 
1546, in the midst of the German Reformation. This 
Council proceeded to pass a formal decree declaring 
what books properly belong in the Bible. The list is 
that of our present Protestant Bible, with the addition 
of the fourteen books of the Old Testament Apocra- 
pha. The Romanists, therefore, with their theory 
that their church is infallible in its decisions, may well 
claim to have an authoritative Scripture canon. But 
there can be no ground for such claim on the part of 
Protestants. 



86 WHAT IS THE BIBLE f 

Luther was decidedly of the opinion that our pres- 
ent canon is imperfect. He thought that the Old 
Testament book of Esther did not belong in the Bible. 
On the other hand, in translating the Old Testament, 
he translated the apocryphal books of Judith, Wis- 
dom, Tobit, Sirach, Baruch, First and Second Macca- 
bees, and the Prayer of Manasseh. In his prefaces he 
gives his judgment concerning these books. With 
regard to First Maccabees, he thinks it almost equal 
to the other books of Holy Scripture, and not un- 
worthy to be reckoned among them. Of Wisdom, he 
says he was long in doubt whether it should be num- 
bered among the canonical books ; and of Sirach, he 
says that it is a right good book, proceeding from a 
wise man. He had judgments equally decided re- 
garding certain New Testament books. He thought 
the Epistle to the Hebrews came neither from Paul 
nor any of the apostles, and was not to be put on an 
equality with Epistles written by apostles themselves. 
The Apocalypse (or Revelation) he considered neither 
apostolic nor prophetic, and of little or no worth. He 
did not believe the Epistle of Jude proceeded from an 
apostle. James' Epistle he pronounced unapostolic, 
and " an epistle of straw." 

The great Swiss reformer, Zwingli, maintained 
that the Apocalypse is not properly a Biblical book. 
Even Calvin did not think that Paul was the author 
of Hebrews, or Peter of the book called II. Peter ; 



CANON IMPERFECT. 87 

while as to the book of Revelation, he denounced it as 
unintelligible, and prohibited the pastors of Geneva 
from all attempts at interpreting it. 

From the foregoing facts it will be seen that 
whereas our Bible, as it stands to-day, contains doubt- 
less what may truly be pronounced on the whole the 
most valuable part of the large mass of literature 
produced by the Jewish people during the thou- 
sand years of their Palestinian history, yet to sup- 
pose that it contains all of that literature that is val- 
uable and truly inspired, or that there are not books 
left out of the Bible which are superior to some that 
are in, and books included which are inferior in every 
way to many left out — I say to suppose that, the 
foregoing facts show to be entirely gratuitous and 
unwarranted. And if to-morrow a council or com- 
mission of the ablest and most unbiased Biblical 
scholars of the world could be called to settle what 
books properly belong to either New Testament or 
Old, there seems room for scarcely a question that the 
list would stand materially different from that which 
we now find in our Bible. 

The Ignorance and Credulity of the Age in which 
the Canon of the New Testament was formed. One 
fact alone, when we come duly to consider it, 
makes it impossible for us to think of the age which 
gives us our New Testament Canon as an age capa- 
ble of any other than imperfect work in such a direc- 



88 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

tion. That fact is the universal credulity and want 
of critical scholarship of that age. We, in our age of 
science, which investigates and tests everything, can 
have no adequate conception of the ease with which 
men accepted whatever they desired to accept, upon 
the smallest modicum of evidence, or even with no 
real evidence at all. In the weighty and carefully 
considered words of Dr. Hedge : " After all that Bib- 
lical critics and antiquarian research have raked from 
the dust of antiquity in proof of the genuineness and 
authenticity of the books of the New Testament, cred- 
ibility still labors with the fact that the age in which 
these books were received and put in circulation was 
one in which the science of criticism as developed 
by the moderns — the science which scrutinizes state- 
ments, balances evidence for and against, and sifts the 
true from the false — did not exist ; an age when a 
boundless credulity disposed men to believe in won- 
ders as readily as in ordinary events, requiring no 
stronger proof in the case of the former than sufficed 
to establish the latter, viz. : — hearsay and vulgar report ; 
an age when literary honesty was a virtue almost un- 
known, and when, consequently, literary forgeries were 
as common as genuine productions, and transcribers 
of sacred books did not scruple to alter the text in the 
interest of personal views and doctrinal preposses- 
sions. The newly-discovered Sinaitic code, the earli- 
est known manuscript of the New Testament, dates 



CANON IMPERFECT. 89 

from the fourth century. Tischendorf, the discoverer, 
a very orthodox critic, speaks without reserve of the 
license in the treatment of the text apparent in this 
Manuscript — a license, he says, especially charac- 
teristic of the first three centuries. " * 

We must bear in mind that it was from such an 
age as this that our New Testament canon comes. 

Says Davidson : " The exact principles that guided 
the formation of a canon cannot be discovered. Defi- 
nite grounds for the reception or rejection of books 
were not very clearly apprehended. The choice 
was determined by various circumstances. The 
development was pervaded by no critical or definite 
principle. No member of the synod (that might be 
at any time engaged in considering the subject of 
what books ought to be regarded as canonical) exer- 
cised his critical faculty ; a number would decide such 
matters summarily. Bishops proceeded in the track 
of tradition or authority." Moreover, a great deal of 
bigotry, and partisanship, and bad blood was manifested 
from first to last. Bishops freely accused bishops of 
forgery of sacred writings and of alteration of the 
oldest texts, and altogether the debates and proceed- 
ings of the synods and councils that had part in set- 

* " Ways of the Spirit/' p. 325. For an excellent picture of the in- 
tellectual condition of Christendom during the ages in which the canon 
of the New Testament was being settled, see Lecky's " History of 
European Morals," vol. ii. pp. 108-21 1. 



9 o 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



tling the canon, remind one very much of some of the 
political conventions of our day.* 

And yet, out of all this a result came, the excel- 
lence of which, on the whole, we may well be appre- 
ciative of. It is easy for the scholarship of to-day to 
see that the men who are responsible for our Bible being 
what it is now, made many and grave mistakes. Never- 
theless, could we understand all the circumstances, 
we should very probably be surprised, and certainly we 
should see that we had reason to be grateful, that those 
mistakes were not more and graver still. That the 
books which have been declared canonical and handed 
down as such to us, are on the whole of so high a type, 
morally or spiritually, as they are, argues much for the 
trustworthiness of the moral and spiritual intuitions of 
the race. Moreover, it argues that a great and wonder- 
ful law, like that which the scientists call " natural 
selection/' or " the survival of the fittest," exists and 
works powerfully and perpetually not only in the physi- 

* On the spirit that pervaded the Councils, see Lecky's "European 
Morals," vol. ii. pp. 207-210. 

" Nowhere is Christianity less attractive than in the Councils of 
the Church. * * Intrigue, injustice, violence, decisions on authority 
alone, and that the authority of a turbulent majority * * detract 
from the reverence and impugn the judgments of at least the later 
Councils. The close is almost invariably a terrible anathema, in 
which it is impossible not to discern the tones of human hatred, of ar- 
rogant triumph, of rejoicing at the damnation imprecated against the 
humiliated adversary." Milman's Hist, of Latin Christianity, vol. i. 
p. 202 (quoted by Lecky). 



CANON IMPERFECT. 



91 



cally organic world, but also quite as really in the in- 
tellectual, moral and religious worlds. Or, to put essen- 
tially the same thing in the form in which Christianity 
would put it, it argues that there is abroad in the world 
an infinite " Spirit of Truth " working everywhere, 
and " leaving himself not without witness " in any age. 
This, then, is in brief the story of the origin and 
development of the extraordinary book which we call 
our Bible, as the most candid and scholarly criticism 
of our day little by little has gathered up that story 
out of the darkness and uncertainty of the far away 
past, and brought it into clearness before our eyes, so 
that we to-day may look at it as it is. Thus we see 
how profoundly true is Emerson's couplet : 

" Out of the heart of Nature rolled 
The burdens of the Bible old ; " 

and the words of Dr. Temple, Bishop of Exeter : 
" The Bible is a record of truths and observations, of 
ways of life and ways of worship, handed down from 
age to age, moulded by each in turn ; growing fuller, 
a7id (as a whole) richer, by timer 

Analogy between the formation of the Christian and 
Buddhist Canons. — No little light is thrown upon the 
origin of the New Testament writings and their forma- 
tion into a canon, by the account given by Max 
Muller of the origin of the Buddhist Sacred Writ- 
ings and their formation into a canon, which I could 



9 2 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



scarcely excuse myself if I did not quote before leav- 
ing this part of my subject. 

During the life of Buddha, says Miiller, " no record 
of events, no sacred code containing the sayings of 
the master was wanted. His presence was enough, 
and thoughts of the future seldom entered the minds 
of those who followed him. It was only after Buddha 
had left the world to enter into Nirvana, that his dis- 
ciples attempted to recall the sayings and doings of 
their departed friend and master. Then everything 
that seemed to redound to the glory of Buddha, how- 
ever extraordinary and incredible, was eagerly wel- 
comed, while witnesses who would have ventured to 
criticise or reject unsupported statements, or detract 
in any way from the holy character of Buddha, had no 
chance of being listened to. And when, in spite of 
all this, differences of opinion arose, they were not 
brought to the test of a careful weighing of evidence, 
but the names of ' unbeliever ' and ' heretic ' were 
quickly invented in India as elsewhere, and bandied 
backwards and forwards between contending parties, 
till at last, when the doctors disagreed, the help of the 
secular power had to be invoked, and kings and em- 
perors convoked councils for the suppression of 
schism, for the settlement of an orthodox creed, and 
for the completion of the Sacred Canon. We know 
of King Asoka, the contemporary of Seleucus, send- 
ing his royal missive to the assembled elders, and tell- 



BUDDHIST AND CHRISTIAN CANONS. 



93 



ing them what to do and what to avoid, warning them 
also in his own name of the apocryphal or heretical 
character of certain books, which, as he thinks, ought 
not to be admitted into the Sacred Canon. 

" We here," continues Miiller, " learn a lesson, 
which is confirmed by the study of other religions, 
that canonical books, though they furnish in most 
cases the most authentic information within the reach 
of the student of religion, are not to be trusted im- 
plicitly, nay, that they must be submitted to a more 
searching criticism and to more stringent tests than 
any other historical books." 

In reading the above, one can hardly believe that 
it is not the history of the origin of our own New 
Testament writings and the formation of our own 
New Testament canon, that Prof. Miiller is tracing, 
instead of the origin of the Buddhist Sacred Writings 
and the formation of the Buddhist Canon. For if we 
substitute " Jesus "in the place of " Buddha," " the 
countries around the Mediterranean sea " in the place 
of " India," and the " Emperor Constantine " with 
one or two other Christian emperors in the place of 
" King Asoka," we shall have an almost exact record 
of the origin of a large part of the literature which 
came into being as the result of Jesus' life and teach- 
ings, and the manner in which a portion of this 
became singled out from the rest and by degrees 
united into essentially what is now our New Testament. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE BIBLE. DIFFICULTIES 

IN THE WAY OF THE THEORY. SOMETHING 

BETTER. 



(95) 



" Neither shall ye tear out one another's eyes, struggling over 
* Plenary Inspiration ' and such like ; try rather to get a little even 
Partial Inspiration, each of you for himself." — Carlyle. 

" An Inspiration as true, as real, and as certain, as that which ever 
prophet or apostle reached/is yours if you will." — F. W. Robertson. 

" Jesus came to reveal the Father. But is God, the Infinite and 
Universal Father, made known only by a single voice heard ages ago on 
the banks of the Jordan or by the Sea of Tiberias ? Is it an unknown 
tongue that the heavens and earth forever utter ? Is nature's page a 
blank ? Does the human soul report nothing of its Creator ? Does 
conscience announce no Authority higher than its own ? Does reason 
discern no trace of an Intelligence, that it cannot comprehend, and yet 
of which it is itself a ray ? Does the heart find in the circuits of crea- 
tion no Friend worthy of trust and love ? " — Channing. 



(96) 



CHAPTER III. 

The Infallibility of the Bible. — Difficulties 
in Way of the Theory. — Something Better. 

What, then, is to be said about the theory, so com- 
monly taught and believed, of the Infallibility of the 
Bible ? Do not the facts that have been cited, and 
the conclusions that have been reached, destroy this ? 

I reply — Doubtless if even a tenth part of what 
has been written above is true, then the Bible cannot 
be infallible. And yet the long array of facts that 
have already passed before our minds, all declaring 
with cumulative emphasis that infallibility is impos- 
sible, does not exhaust a tithe of the evidence there 
is against it. 

Infallible Transmission as Necessary as Infallible 
Origin. — For grant even that the Bible was originally 
infallible, — that is to say, grant that the books were 
written in such a marvellous way as to insure their 
infallible correctness at the time of their writing ; 
and grant that all the books which have been 
excluded from the canon of Old Testament and New 

^ (97) 



98 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

by us Protestants, are just the ones that ought to be 
excluded, and that all which have been included are 
just the ones that ought to be included, and that all 
which have been lost were spurious, so that the loss 
does not affect at all the perfectness of the canon — 
grant all that ; yet even now how far have we got 
toward certainty that this Bible which we hold in our 
hand to-day is infallible — is infallible as it comes to 
us. In other words, grant that the stream, as it 
began its course away back yonder in Palestine 
twenty-two or twenty, or eighteen, or sixteen cen- 
turies ago, was infallible in its outset, what assurance 
have we that now, after wandering and winding down 
through the dark maze of the ages, it is still infalli- 
ble ? For mark : after we have got the writings all 
infallibly written, and then after we have got them all 
collected together just as they should be into a canon 
or infallible collection, we have still got to devise a 
way to get them down to our time. How are we 
going to do that ? 

How have they come down to our time ? In 
order intelligently to answer this question it is neces- 
sary to bear in mind that the books of the Bible were, 
a majority of them, written originally in Hebrew. 

Was the Hebrew Language hifallible ? — The 
Hebrew written language at the time of the origin of 
the Bible, had in it no vowels. Everything had to be 
written in mere consonant outline — somewhat like 



THE HEBRE W LA NG UA GE. gg 

the abbreviated running hand of a reporter. Try to 
imagine how long infallibility could be preserved in 
writings made up purely of consonants — which sim- 
ply put, say, bk for book or back or beck, ppr for 
paper or piper or pepper, pn for pen or pun, or pain 
or pan, and so on.* 

That I may not convey a false impression, let me 
cite a word or two from the ancient Hebrew. The 
Hebrew word (or consonant outline of a word) qtl 
may be a noun, a verb or a participle ; and if a verb, 
it may be active, passive or reduplicative ; and it may 
have nine different meanings, according to the vowels 
that the reader supplies in connection with it. The 
Hebrew word dbhr may have five different meanings, 
to wit : " a word," " he hath spoken," " to speak," 
" speaking," " it has been spoken," and " a pestilence," 
according to the vowels we supply, f This then is the 

*The "points" by which the vowels are indicated, were not intro- 
duced into the text until long after Christ — probably not earlier than 
the seventh century — when Hebrew had for some time been a dead 
language. See article, " Hebrew Language," in McClintock and 
Strong's " Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature." 

t It is now ascertained that we do not know with certainty even 
what was the name given by the Hebrews to their God. We have 
always spelled it " Jehovah " : but it is now found out that that spell- 
ing is probably not correct. The real name is probably " Jah-veh," 
or u Yahweh." (See Appendix, by Russell Martineau, at the end of 
Ewald's History of Israel, vol. ii.) The true spelling became lost as 
the result of writing by mere consonant outlines, and thus forgetting 
in the process of time what vowels were to be supplied. Such 
writers as Ewald, Kuenen, Baur, Zeller, and Keim, all are adopting 



100 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

kind of written language in which the larger part of 
our Bible finds itself originally recorded. As Gesenius 
says, " How imperfect and indefinite such a mode of 
writing was, is easily seen." But we must not forget 
that for our supposed originally perfect Bible to get 
down infallible to us, it must pass through centuries 
of transcribing by pen in this same kind of language. 
Can we suppose that the copyists made no mistakes? 



the spelling Jahveh or Yahweh, and laying aside the old spelling 
Jehovah. 

" So long as the Hebrew language was a spoken tongue it was 
written without vowels or any letters being doubled. This is just the 
way our short-hand writers now take down speeches, and is generally 
sufficient to remind the reporter of a speech, the ideas of which have 
been distinctly and recently understood. Some years ago a friend 
undertook to learn short-hand. Hessian boots were worn in those 
days with little tassels, one in front of each. Going out hastily, this 
gentleman discovered that a tassel was torn off one of his boots, and 
to show his proficiency in the new art, he wrote his teacher in another 
room to ask : " Have you an old boot tassel ? M The vowels being all 
omitted, and also the doubling of the letters, signs were made for the 
following letters : * Hv y n Id bt tsl/ which his friend not unnaturally 
read thus : * Have you an old boot to sell ? ' Why his pupil could want 
to buy an old boot from him, required more explanation than short 
hand could well give. Now the difficulty of the ancient Hebrew with- 
out points is just this : that, although where people were very familiar 
with the subject and language, this style of writing was ordinarily 
sufficient at least to guide the priests, and remind them of the law, so 
that they could explain it to the people ; yet there would always be 
many cases where the meaning was left extremely doubtful, with- 
out the aid and authority of tradition." Curtis, " Human Element in 
Inspiration," pp. 170-174. 



TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE. IO i 

Certainly we do not find infallible copyists now-a- 
days, even with our comparatively perfect language. 

Were the Translators Infallible ? — Next come the 
translators. To-day translators are very fallible 
beings. Have the translators of all the ages, who 
have translated Hebrew into Greek and Latin, and 
Greek and Latin into English, and Hebrew into Eng- 
lish, in connection with the Old and New Testament 
books, been miraculously preserved from making 
errors ? If so, what mean the many thousands of 
errors which the great Commission of English schol- 
ars, who are now making for us a new English trans- 
lation of the Bible, find in the common translation or 
version of King Tames ? * 

So, then, what becomes of our infallible Bible ? It 
has melted away into thin air if there be one single 
link imperfect in all the two-thousand-years-long chain 
of preservation and transmission of the original 
writings down to us. And this on the supposition too 

* " The whole number of various readings of the text of the New 
Testament that have hitherto been noted exceeds a hundred thousand, 
and may perhaps amount to a hundred and fifty thousand." {Genuine- 
ness of the Gospels, by Andrews Norton, p. 417.) Some of these varia- 
tions, it is true, are very slight, and in no way affect the sense. But 
others again are very marked, and affect the sense most materially. 
For example, the celebrated text (I. John v. 7,8) of the three heavenly 
witnesses, which has been for a thousand years the strongest scripture 
bulwark of the doctrine of the Trinity, is admitted now on all hands to 
be an interpolation. For other important interpolations see above, p. 
67 ', first note. 



102 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

that those original writings were every one infallibly 
perfect at first, and moreover that the canon of both 
Old Testament and New was formed with infallible 
perfection. What then shall we say when, interroga- 
ting the best scholarship of the age, and in its light 
tracing the history of the origin of the various Bible 
books and of the formation of a canon, we find in 
connection with these, instead of infallibility, traces 
of many-sided fallibility everywhere ? 

Sixty-six Infallible Books ? — Nor must we forget 
that even if we could prove the infallibility of one or 
even a score of the books of the Bible, that would not 
establish the infallibility of the rest of the books. 
For, as we have seen, originally the books were not 
together. There is no way of establishing the infalli- 
bility of the Bible as a whole, only by establishing the 
infallibility of each and every one of the books that 
make it up. If I have in my library sixty-six miscel- 
laneous volumes of prose and poetry, history, biogra- 
phy, letters, etc., written in three or four different 
countries, and by men of all grades of character and 
culture, some of them living ten centuries apart, will 
the fact that I may be able to prove a certain thing 
about one or more of the volumes justify me in claim- 
ing that I have proved it concerning all ? Certainly it 
will not. Very well, the Bible is just such a library 
of sixty-six miscellaneous books, of various and, for 
the most part, utterly unconnected origin. Every 



SIXTY-SIX SEPARATE BOOKS. 103 

book, therefore, which has a place in it stands or falls 
by itself. The various books are not a whit more 
related to each other than they would be if they were 
printed and bound as sixty-six different and distinct 
volumes, each under its own separate name. The 
real question then is not as to one infallibility, but as 
to sixty-six infallibilities. 

But a large number of the most serious difficulties 
in the way of believing in the infallibility of the Bible, 
I have not mentioned at all. I should be inexcusable 
if I did not point out some of the more prominent of 
these, so that it may be seen as plainly as possible 
how increasingly hard and hopeless a task candid 
men, who think and investigate, are finding they have 
before them, when they undertake to keep their belief 
that the Bible is a book of perfect and invariable 
accuracy and truth. The following points I mention 
without stopping to elaborate them more than in the 
briefest manner. 

1. The Doctrine of Infallibility has its Origin in 
some other Source than the Bible itself. — The Bible 
does not claim to be infallible. While in places 
certain claims of superior inspiration or guidance of 
God are doubtless put forth, there is not even one 
single book of the Bible that claims to be infallible* 

* " The frequent use in the Old Testament of such solemn phrases 
as ' Thus saith the Lord ;' ' And God said ; ' ' And God spake these words 
and said ; ' and verses which tell us that ' All scripture is given by in- 



104 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE f 



Of the few Scriptures passages that are quoted in 
support of the infallibility theory, the following is 
conceded by every writer, so far as I know, to be the 
strongest, to wit : " All Scripture is given by inspira- 
tion of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, 
for correction, for instruction in righteousness/' (II. 

spiration of God ; ' that * holy men of old spake as they were moved by m 
the Holy Ghost/ form one of the chief foundations on which the claim 
(that the Bible is infallible) is rested. Upon the use of the phrases 
quoted, some very instructive facts are given by Sir Samuel Baker in his 
book on the * Nile Tributaries.' He says (pp. 129-131) : ' The conversa- 
tion of the Arabs is in the exact style of the Old Testament. The name 
of God is coupled with every trifling incident in life. Should a famine 
afflict the country, it is expressed in the stern language of the Old Testa- 
ment : " The Lord hath sent a grievous famine upon the land." Should 
their cattle fall sick, it is considered to be an affliction by Divine com- 
mand ; or should the flocks prosper and multiply, the prosperity is at- 
tributed to divine interference. * * Thus there is great light thrown 
upon many Old Testament passages by the experience of the present 
customs and figures of speech of the Arabs. * * With the Bible in one 
hand and these unchanged tribes before the eyes, there is a thrilling illus- 
tration of the sacred records. * * Should the present history of the 
country be written by an Arab scribe, the style of description would be 
purely that of the Old Testament, and the various calamities, or the 
good fortunes that have, in the course of nature, befallen both the 
tribes and individuals would be recounted either as special visitations 
of divine wrath, or blessings for good deeds performed. If in a dream 
a particular course of action is suggested, the Arab believes that God 
has spoken and directed him. The Arab scribe or historian would 
describe the event as the u voice of the Lord " having spoken unto the 
person; or that God appeared to him in a dream and "said" etc. 
Thus much allowance would be necessary on the part of a European 
reader for the figurative ideas and expressions of the people ? ' v — 
Clodd's " Childhood of Religion," pp. 236-238. 



BIBLE DOES NOT CLAIM INFALLIBILITY. I0 5 

Tim. iii. 16.) But as soon as we begin to look at this 
passage carefully, two or three things appear, which 
rob it utterly of its value as proof that the Bible is 
infallible, (i.) It says nothing about infallibility : it 
speaks only of inspiration. Nor are the two necessa- 
rily connected. For Peter and Paul, who are regard- 
ed as inspired men, confess that they make mistakes. 
But if inspired men may err, why not an inspired 
book ? (2.) At the time this epistle of Paul to 
Timothy was written, there was no New Testa- 
ment, nor the slightest thought on the part of any- 
body, so far as we can find out, that there ever was 
going to be one. The "all Scripture" spoken of 
can refer therefore only to the Old Testament. So 
that even if this text proves infallibility at all, it is only 
of the Old Testament. (3.) But there is no evidence 
that it proves even that, as seen from the fact that 
our translation of the passage is at best a disputed 
translation. The original Greek of the passage is 
certainly capable of being translated : w Every writing, 
divinely inspired (or which is divinely inspired), is also 
profitable for instruction, reproof,'' etc. And that is 
the rendering of the passage that seems generally to 
have been given it, taking the history of the church 
as a whole. The Syriac, the Vulgate, nearly if not 
all the ancient versions, Clement of Alexandria, The- 
odoret, Origen six or seven times over, most of the 
Christian Fathers, thus interpreted the passage. 



106 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

Moreover the present Roman Catholic Bible thus 
translates it, as did Wickliffe, Tindal, and the Bible 
of 1551. But as soon as we concede that the passage 
ought to be translated in this way, or even may be 
translated in this way, all its value as a proof of the 
infallibility even of the Old Testament is gone. So 
much then for this passage, conceded to be the 
strongest of any in the Bible as proof of infallibility. 
I cannot stop to consider in detail other texts some- 
times quoted. Suffice it to say that a careful study 
of the whole subject can scarcely fail to convince 
any unprejudiced mind that the claim so strongly 
made in our day that the Bible is infallible does not 
come from the Bible itself.* 

2. Did not appear till modern Times. — The doc- 
trine of the infallibility of the Bible, in the rigid 
sense in which it is widely held and taught now, 
was unknown to the early Christian church. Indeed 
it did not come into existence until the sixteenth cen- 
tury, not having been held even by the earliest and 
greatest of the Reformers. The Catholic church has 
never adopted it.f 

* See " The Creed of Christendom, " by W. R. Greg, vol. i. 
chaps, i. and ii., also " The Human Element in Inspiration," by Prof. 
T. F. Curtis, chaps, vi. and vii. 

t That the Jews also did not regard the Old Testament as in- 
fallible, is shown by the fact that they assigned to different portions of 
it different degrees of inspiration and authority (see above, pp. 19, 20) ; 
also by the fact that so great freedom was exercised by Ezra, by 
the Great Synagogue, and by transcribers generally, in making emenda- 



IS THE BIBLE INFALLIBLE ? 



107 



3. The Bible testifies of itself that it is not infal- 
lible, in the fact that it contains many things which 
it is impossible to reconcile with the theory of infal- 
libility. 

(1.) Contradictions. — It contains plain contradic- 
tions. These furnish evidence so incontrovertible, 
that I shall cite a considerable number, though only a 
small part of all there are. Fully a hundred cases of 
clear contradictions lie before me as I write. 

Comparing II. Samuel, xxiv. 1, with I. Chronicles, 
xxi. 1, we find the same event spoken of, viz. : David's 
numbering of Israel. But in one passage we are told 
that it was the Lord, and in the other that it was Sa- 
tan, that prompted David to make the numbering. Of 
course both cannot be true, unless the Lord and Sa- 
tan are the same being. 

I place a few passages side by side : 

" And David's heart smote him that " David did that which was right in 

he had numbered the people. And David the eyes of the Lord, and turned not aside 
said unto the Lord I have sinned greatly from anything that he commanded him 
in that I have done." II. Sam. xxiv. 10. all the days of his life, save only in the 

matter of Uriah the Hittite." I. Kings 

xv. 5. 

In one of these passages we have David repre- 
sented as having sinned in the matter of numbering 
Israel ; in the other as never having sinned in any- 
thing except in robbing Uriah the Hittite of his wife. 

tions and alterations in it. See note, p. 53. See Curtis' " Human 
Element in Inspiration," pp. 96 and 97. Also Greg, vol. i. pp. 6-8. 



io8 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE f 



Compare these passages : 

"And it came to pass after these " Let no man say when he is tempted, 

things, that God did tempt Abraham." I am tempted of God : for God cannot be 
Gen. xxii. i. tempted with evil, neither tempteth he 

" O Lord, thou hast deceived me, and any man." James i. 13. 
I was deceived." Jer. xx. 7. 

" Lead us not into temptation." Matt. 
vi. 13. • 

The endeavor is made to explain away the contra- 
diction here, by saying that the word " tempt " in the 
passage from Genesis does not mean to tempt, but to 
" try one's faith/' I reply, if we change its meaning 
to suit our notion in one case, we must at least be 
consistent and change the meaning correspondingly 
in the others. But this done, our contradiction re- 
mains just as completely as before. Moreover, even if 
we grant that in Genesis "tempt" does not mean to 
tempt, does it not at least mean that in Matthew ? 
And in Jeremiah do we not have God not only tempt- 
ing to evil, but carrying the temptation to the length 
of actual deception ? So, then, explain it as we will, 
we have the contradictory representation of a God 
who both tempts and does not tempt men. 

Compare these passages : 



' The earth abideth forever." Eccl. 



' Who laid the foundations of the ter iii. 10. 



" The earth also, and the works that 
are therein, shall be burned up." II. Pe- 



earth that it should not be removed for- 
ever." Psalm civ. 5. 



" They shall perish, but thou remain- 
est." Heb. i. xx. 

" I saw a great white throne, and him 
that sat on it, from whose face the earth 
and the heaven fled away, and there was 
no place found for them." Rev. xx. 11. 



CONTRADICTIONS. 



109 



And these : 

" Elijah went up by a whirlwind into " No man hath ascended up to heaven 

heaven." II. Kings ii. 11. but he that came down from heaven, even 

the Son of man." John iii. 13. 

And these : 



" Whosoever is born of God doth not 



u There is no man that sinneth not." 



commit sin ; he cannot sin because he is I. Kings viii. 46. 

born of God." I. John iii. 9. " There is not a just man upon the 

earth, that doeth good and sinneth not." 

Eccl. vii. 20. 

And these : 

"Hast thou not heard that the ever- "lam weary with repenting." Jer. 

lasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the xv. 6. 

ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is "In six days the Lord made heaven 

wear}'?" Isaiah xl. 28. and earth, and on the seventh day he 

rested, and was refreshed." Ex. xxxi. 

l 7- 

And the. following : 

"The eyes of the Lord are in every 
place." Prov. xiv. 3. 

" There is no darkness nor shadow of 
death where the workers of iniquity may 
hide themselves." Job xxxiv. 22. 

" And David took from him a thou- 
sand chariots and seven hundred horse- 
men." II. Sam. viii. 4. 

" Michal, the daughter of Saul, had 
no child unto the day of her death." II. 
Sam. vi. 23. 

" And the men which journeyed with 
him (Paul) stood speechless, hearing a 
voice, but seeing no man." Acts ix. 7. 

" I have seen God face to face." Gen. 
xxxii. 30. 



"Adam and his wife hid themselves 
from the presence of the Lord, among 
the trees of the garden." Gen. iii. 8. 



" And David took from him a thou- 
sand chariots and seven thousand horse- 
men." I. Chron. xviii. 4. 

" The jive sons of Michal, the daugh- 
ter of Saul." II. Sam. xxi. 8. 

" They that were with me saw indeed 
the light and were afraid ; but they heard 
not the voice of him that spake to me." 
Acts xxii. 9. 

"No man hath seen God at and 
time." I. John iv. 12. 



HO WHAT IS THE BIBLE f 

"I am the Lord, I change not." Mai. "And God repented of the evil that 

iii. 6. he said he would do unto them, and he 

" With whom is no variableness, nei- did it not." Jonah iii. 10. 
ther shadow of turning." James i. 17. [There are no less than fourteen 

" I will not go back, neither will I re- places in the Bible where God is spoken 

pent." Ezekiel xxiv. 14. of as repenting.] 

"There is no respect of persons (par- " Jacob have I loved, but Esau have 

tiality) with God." Rom. ii. n. I hated." Rom. ix, 13. (See vs. xo-18.) 

"He that goeth down to the grave "The trumpet shall sound and the 

shall come up no more." Job vii. 9. dead shall be raised." I. Cor. xv. 52. 

There are many contradictions connected with 
the accounts we have of the life of yesus. I can 
only refer to a few of them, and in the briefest way.* 

First of all there is a difficulty in accounting for 
the childhood of Jesus. According to Luke he was 
born in Bethlehem, after which (Luke i. 22) his 
parents took him to Jerusalem to perform some re- 
ligious ceremony in the temple, when he was forty 
days old, and then at once departed (Luke ii. 39) 

* For contradictions in the Gospels see " Bible for Young People " 
(called " Bible for Learners " in Am. Ed.), vol. i. ; Greg's " Creed of 
Christendom" chaps* vi. to xii. and xiv. ; "The Jesus of History," 
by Sir R. Hanson ; " The Fourth Gospel/' by Rev. J. J. Tayler ; 
" The English Life of Jesus," published by Thomas Scott, Ludgate ; 
and Davidson's " Introduction to the New Testament." On contra- 
dictions in the Bible at large, see (in addition to the above-named 
works) Bishop Colenso's writings ; " The Hebrew Monarchy," by Prof. 
F. W. Newman ; " Bible for Young People," vols, on the Old Testa- 
ment ; chaps, iii. to v. of "Creed of Christendom;" " Common-Sense 
Thoughts on the Bible," by Wm. Denton (pamphlet) ; " Self-contra- 
dictions of the Bible " by S. S. Jones (pamphlet) ; "The Bible, is it 
the Word of God ? " by T. L. Strange ; and Davidson's " Introduc- 
tion to the Old Test." 



CONTRADICTIONS. j x x 

into Galilee to their own city, Nazareth ; and from 
there they went up every year to Jerusalem to the 
feast of the passover (ii. 41). Thus we have the 
childhood of Jesus accounted for up to twelve years 
of age. But now turning to Matthew (chapter ii.) 
we find a different and conflicting account. Matthew 
tells us that immediately after the birth of Jesus and 
the visit of the Magi, his parents took him (not back 
to Nazareth, but) down into Egypt ; and the return 
to Nazareth was not until after a residence of some 
time in Egypt and the death of Archelaus, Herod's 
son and successor. How are these two accounts to 
be harmonized ? 

Again, there are irreconcilable difficulties in con- 
nection with the genealogies of Jesus given by Mat- 
thew and Luke. Both these genealogies trace the 
ancestry of Jesus through Joseph. But having done 
this, both Matthew and Luke tell us that Joseph was 
not the father of Jesus at all. Thus Jesus is claimed 
to have descended from David, because a man who 
is not his father descended from David. A most 
extraordinary claim ! Moreover, Matthew says the 
number of generations from Abraham to David is 
fourteen, and from David to the Captivity fourteen, 
and from the Captivity to Christ fourteen. But if 
we look carefully at the genealogy, as he himself gives 
it, the number from Abraham to David is only thin 
teen, and the number from the Captivity to Christ 



112 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

is only thirteen. Furthermore, the genealogies of 
Joseph, the husband of Mary (called the genealogies 
of Jesus, but not the genealogy of Jesus at all unless 
Joseph was Jesus' father) as given by Matthew and 
Luke, are radically different, agreeing in only fifteen 
names in the whole list, and differing in forty names. 
Now, when we bear in mind that these genealogies 
both run back in the male line, from son to father, 
and then grandfather, and then great-grandfather, 
and so on, we see that divergence can mean nothing 
else but error in one or the other of the authorities, 
or both. Nor may we suppose that one genealogy 
is that of Mary. Such a supposition rests on not a 
shadow of evidence, while it is positively contradicted 
by the language of the text. 

Passing on from the birth and childhood to the 
ministry of Jesus, there are many more discrepancies 
and contradictions. For example, in the first three 
Gospels Jesus is represented as going to the wilder- 
ness immediately after his baptism, and remaining 
there forty days. But when we turn to John, he tells 
us that on the third day after the baptism Jesus is 
in Cana of Galilee at a wedding, and not a word is 
said about any wilderness or temptation. Of course 
both these accounts cannot be true, unless Jesus can 
have been in two places, one in the northern part of 
Palestine and the other in the southern, at the same 
time. 



NEW TESTAMENT CONTRADICTIONS. 



"3 



The inscription on the cross is given differently 
by each of the Gospel writers as follows : 

" This is Jesus, the king of the Jews." Matt, 
xxvii. 37. 

" The King of the Jews." Mark xv. 26. 

" This is the King of the Jews." Luke xxiii. 38. 

" Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews." John 
xix. 19. 

Of course only one of the four can be correct. 
Or, if it be claimed that, as the inscription was 
written in Hebrew, Greek and Latin, the form may 
possibly have varied in these different languages, and 
one Gospel writer may have reported one form and 
another another ; even then the difficulty is only 
slightly lessened ; for this would give us only three 
varieties of form, whereas we have coming down to 
us four. So that still we are obliged to confess that 
at least one of the Gospel narrators has made a 
mistake. 

One case more. Paul tells us (I. Cor. xv. 5) that 
Christ was seen of the twelve apostles after his resur- 
rection. But there were not twelve apostles to see 
him ; there were only eleven : since we are told that 
Judas had hanged himself, and the twelfth apostle, 
Matthias, was not elected until after Christ's ascen- 
sion. 

There are several very palpable contradictions in 
the accounts given of the resurrection, and the events 



II 4 WHAT IS THE BIBLE f 

occurring between the resurrection and ascension ; 
but I pass by these, as well as a great number of 
contradictions in other parts of both the New and the 
Old Testaments. Indeed, much as I have enlarged 
upon this point of the contradictions of the Bible, 
I have not used a quarter of the material that has 
accumulated on my hands. Want of space, however, 
compels me to stop here.* 

Of course I am aware of the cheap way of meet- 
ing these contradictions, which is coming to be so 
common, viz., sneering at them as the " invention of 
infidels/' declaring that they are "as old as Chris- 
tianity," and " have been answered a thousand times 

* It is a subject of general wonder and lament that there should 
be so many sects in Christendom. " How is it," the question is asked 
in astonishment, " that people going to the same Bible for their doc- 
trines and creeds, reach so many different beliefs ? " Generally, either 
the riddle is thought to be inexplicable, or else an explanation is 
sought in the blindness of men's mental vision, the perversity of their 
judgment, or the " hardness of their heart." The time will some time 
come when it will be seen that there is an explanation a great deal 
simpler and more rational than either of these. That explanation lies, 
in no small part, in the fact that the Bible is not one whole, but sixty- 
six wholes ; that it is not one book, but a literature made up of sixty- 
six books, — written many centuries apart, in three or four different 
countries, under widely different conditions of civilization, by writers 
differing in belief and style, and aim and character, as widely as Whit- 
tier and Joaquin Miller, or John Calvin and John Murray (compare 
Romans with Canticles, and John's Gospel with Ecclesiastes), and 
with no thought on the part of any of the writers (so far as we can find 
out) that their writings would ever be bound up together. * 






REPLYING VS. ANSWERING. 115 

over." To this I only care to say — they are not the 
" invention of infidels " or of anybody else ; they are 
simply obstinate facts, that refuse to accommodate 
themselves to the wish of either " infidel " or Chris- 
tian. As to their being "as old as Christianity," 
this is true ; that is to say, careful and unprejudiced 
students of the Bible from the earliest ages have 
perceived contradictions in it, though with the lapse 
of time and the advance of biblical scholarship, the 
number of these contradictions discovered has con- 
stantly increased. As to their having been " an- 
swered a thousand times," I have only to say, they 
have been replied to a thousand times — they have 
never been answered at all. 

I pass on now to notice other things which the 
Bible contains, which it is impossible to reconcile 
with the theory of infallibility. Concerning these I 
shall be more brief, citing only illustrations enough 
(of the many that might be cited) to make my mean- 
ing clear. 

(2.) Things absurd. — The Bible contains many 
things intrinsically absurd. For example, the state- 
ment that the first woman was made of a rib taken out 
of the first man's side ; the accounts of a serpent, and 
of an ass, talking ; the stories of Jonah living three 
days within a fish (Matt. xii. 40, says a whale), and of 
Nebuchadnezzar eating grass like an ox for seven 
years. When we find such stories as these in any of 



1 16 WHA T IS THE BIBLE f 

the Sacred Books of the world except our own, 
we do not for a moment think of believing them. 
We say they are so absurd that of course we can't 
believe them. But do they become any less absurd 
by being found in our own Sacred Book ? * 

(3.) Historical Mistakes. — The Bible contains ac- 
counts and statements not historically correct. For 
example. We read in Luke, that Augustus Caesar, the 
Roman emperor, issued a decree that " all the world 
should be taxed " — that is, enrolled or registered for 
the purposes of a census ; and that it was in connec- 
tion with the carrying into effect of this decree, when 
Cyrenius was governor of Syria, that Joseph and 
Mary went, as the decree required them to do, to 
Bethlehem, Joseph's native city, to be taxed (regis- 
tered) ; and while they were there Jesus was born. 
(See Luke, second chapter.) Now in connection with 
this account there are no less than three or four 
distinct mistakes. In the first place, history is silent 
as to a census of the whole (Roman) world ever hav- 
ing been made at all. In the second place, it is true 
that Cyrenius (Quirinus) did make an enrollment in 
Palestine, but it was confined to Judea and Samaria, 
and did not extend to Galilee, and hence Joseph's 

* I mean, these stories are absurd when we look at them as ac- 
counts of actual events. When looked at as we look at similar stories 
in other Sacred Books, viz., as legends and myths, they are all interest- 
ing, and some of them are beautiful and instructive. 



ERRORS HISTORICAL AND SCIENTIFIC. 



117 



household (in Nazareth) could not have been affected 
by it. In the third place in did not take place until 
ten years after the death of Herod, instead of during 
the reign of Herod as the account of Luke states. 
Finally, at the time of the birth of Jesus, the gov- 
ernor of Syria was not Cyrenius (Quirinus) but Quin- 
tus Sentius Saturninus. 

Take another example. In Matthew xxiii. 35, 
it is stated that the Jews " slew Zacharias, Son of 
BarachiaSy between the temple and the altar." This 
is an error. It was Zechariah, son of yehoiaddy quite 
a different man, who was thus murdered. (See II. 
Chron. xxiv. 20-22). Zacharias, son of Barachias, 
lived some 230 years later. There are a considerable 
number of as plain cases of historical error as these. 

(4.) Scientific Errors. — The Bible contains state- 
ments opposed to science. The Genesis account of 
the creation, the story of the deluge, the standing still 
of the sun at the command of Joshua, are illustra- 
tions. Attempts are made to harmonize these with 
science ; but the distorting of language that has to 
be resorted to in order to accomplish even a sem- 
blance of reconciliation, is such as would be tolerated 
nowhere outside of theological discussion ; indeed it 
is such as destroys the signification of human speech, 
making it mean anything or nothing.* 

* See above, pp. 27, 28. Compare the disingenuous subtleties, dis- 
tortions of language and special pleadings of the majority of the " har- 



Il8 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

(5.) Exaggerations. — The Bible contains evident 
exaggerations. For example — the statements that 
Methuselah lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years ; 
and Enos nine hundred and five years ; and that 
Lamech was a hundred and eighty-two years old when 
his first son was born. Also, the account given in II. 
Chron. xiii. of the number of soldiers in the Jewish 
armies — to wit, under Abijah 400,000, and under Jero- 
boam 800,000 picked men ; of the latter 500,000 fell 
in a single battle. That this must be an enormous 
exaggeration — utterly beyond possible truth — will ap- 
pear when we remember that the whole country of 
Palestine from which these 1,200,000 " chosen, mighty 
men of valor " were raised at one time, was not as 
large as the little country of Wales. Napoleon's 
largest army — that with which he invaded Russia — 
consisted of only 500,000 men, the exact number here 
said to have fallen on one side in a single fight. 

monizers " of Science and Scripture, with the manly frankness and 
fidelity to truth of such men as Dean Stanley, who does not hesitate 
to say : " It is now clear to all students of the Bible that the first and 
second chapters of Genesis contain two Narratives of the creation, 
side by side, differing from each other in almost every particular of time, 
place and order." Memorial Sermon at the funeral of Sir Charles 
Lyell. See Bishop Colenso's Works ; Curtis's " Human Element in 
Inspiration," chap, iv ; " The Irreconcilable Records : or Genesis 
and Geology," by Wm. Denton : " The Deluge in the Light of Modern 
Science," by the same author; "The Bible and Science," by 
John Weiss; " The Conflict Between Religion and Science," by J. 
W. Draper; " The Warfare of Science," by President A. D. White. 



O VER-STA TEMENTS. 



II 9 



Again, we have an account given (see I. Saml vi. 
19) of 50,070 men of the little village of Beth-She- 
mesh, being on a certain occasion slaughtered by the 
Lord, because they looked into the ark. Not to say 
anything about the enormity of punishing in so terri- 
ble a manner so trivial an offense, notice the number 
of the slain. In no community is it ever estimated that 
more than one in five -of the population can be men. 
So then we see that Beth-Shemesh (which we know to 
have been only an insignificant village) must have 
contained, to make the account true, not less than 
250,000 population. Does this look like infallibility ? 
But such exaggerations are numerous in all the older 
historical parts of the Bible. 

(6.) Childish Representations of God. — The Bible 
contains representations of God which, in the light of 
such teachings as those of Jesus, we cannot do other- 
wise than regard as childish. For example — in Ex- 
odus xxx. 34-38, we have an account of God giving 
Moses very minute directions for making perfumery, 
of a kind that would be " holy for the Lord," to be 
used in the tabernacle when God came to meet with 
Moses ; and if any other person made the same he 
should be put to death. So, then, we have the Creator 
of the universe engaged in the very dignified business 
of giving instructions as to what kind of perfumery 
is agreeable to him ; moreover, making sure that he 
shall have it alone, and no one else shall have it with 



120 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

him, by attaching the death penalty to all rival manu- 
facture of the perfume. 

(7.) Morally Degrading Representations of God. — 
The Bible contains, among certain of its Old Testa- 
ment writings, representations of God according to 
which he is not a morally perfect being. For example, 
we are told that God hardened Pharaoh's heart that he 
should not let the children of Israel go out of the land 
of Egypt (Ex. vii. 13, and xi. 10), and then pun- 
ished him in the most terrible manner for not letting 
them go. Would this be right, on the part of God ? 
Certainly not ; unless morality is an altogether lower 
and poorer thing with God than it is with us. Again, 
in the Second Commandment (Ex. xx. 5) the reason 
urged by God against idolatry is that he is a "jealous 
God." Thus a trait of character is ascribed to him 
which everybody will agree is degrading even to a 
human being. 

Again, we read that God ordered Moses to say 
unto the King of Egypt, "Let us go, we beseech 
thee, three days' journey into the wilderness, that we 
may sacrifice unto the Lord our God," when the ob- 
ject of their going was not that, at all, but to escape 
altogether out of the land, not to come back. Thus 
we are told that God commanded Moses to lie. In 
harmony with this we are told that God ordered the 
Jewish people when they got ready to start on their 
journey, to borrow every valuable thing they could of 



LOW IDEAS OF GOD. 121 

their Egyptian neighbors, and carry it off. Thus 
they are commanded to rob as well as lie. 

Again, while the Israelites are in the wilderness 
a revolt breaks out, headed by three men, Korah, 
Dathan and Abiram. God commands Moses and 
Aaron at once to separate themselves from the rest 
of the people, that he may consume the others with 
fire. But Moses and Aaron beg God not to be angry 
with the whole congregation for one mans sin. In 
spite of this plea, however, fourteen thousand seven 
hundred persons died of the plague, besides the two 
hundred and fifty insurrectionists who were swallowed 
up by an earthquake. And the plague would have 
gone on until all were dead, innocent and guilty alike, 
had not Aaron rushed in with a censer full of incense, 
which made an atonement for the people, and the 
plague was stayed (Num. xvi. 20-50). Thus Aaron 
and Moses are represented as not only more merciful, 
but more just, than God. 

Again, we find it recorded that God commanded 
Joshua to massacre the people of a certain list of 
cities — all the men and women and innocent children; 
the only reason being, so that he (Joshua) and his 
followers might possess their cities and their rich 
lands. (Joshua x. 28-41). Now if the Koran con- 
tained records of such commands, said to have been 
given by the God of the Mohammedans to- a Moham- 
medan general, Christian men would never make an 



122 WHAT IS THE BIBLE f 

end of pointing to them as illustrations of the low 
and degraded ideas about God taught by Moham- 
medanism. But if such ideas of God would be low and 
imperfect as taught in the Koran, are they less low 
and imperfect when taught in our Old Testament ? 

Again, to mention only one more case, we read in 
the career of Jehu of as horrible crimes as it is possi- 
ble for man to commit, all done under the command of 
God and with his approval. (See II. Kings, chapters 
ix. and x.) First Jehu shoots King Joram, and then 
orders the assassination of King Ahaziah ; then by 
craft he obtains the heads of seventy of Ahab's chil- 
dren, which are packed in baskets and sent to him 
to Jezreel ; pretending to have had nothing to do with 
this massacre, he follows it up by slaying all the rest 
of Ahab's relations and friends, and great men and 
priests, until " he left him none remaining/' It seems, 
however, that forty-two brethren of Ahaziah and a 
temple full of priests still live ; these he murders 
without a word of warning. " It is easy enough to 
see that Jehu only acted like an unscrupulous 
usurper, who finds the safety of his throne dependent 
upon the extermination of the late dynasty, while his 
slaughter of the worshippers of Baal was done partly 
as a sop to the priests of Jehovah, who had been in- 
strumental in urging his pretensions, and partly to 
crush all lingering sympathy with the house of Ahab 
in the minds of the people. He was a consummate 



IMPERFECT MORAL NOTIONS. 



123 



dissembler, hypocrite, and murderer ; and yet the 
Bible tells us that he did according to ' all that was 
in God's heart/ all that was ' right in God's eyes/ and 
received for so doiifg God's approval and reward." 

(8.) Inculcation of what is wrong. — There are many 
places where the Old Testament both directly and in- 
directly not only sanctions but inculcates what is 
wrong. For example, in Exodus xxii. 18, we read the 
command, " Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. ,, 
This command to put witches to death, it is probably 
safe to say, has resulted in the hanging, burning, drown- 
ing, and killing in one way and another, of hundreds 
of thousands if not millions of innocent persons; just 
as a somewhat similar text in the Vedas (previously 
mentioned) has caused multitudes of Hindoo widows 
to perform the dreadful rite of Suttee. So tremen- 
dous is the power for evil of a false precept or bad 
command laid upon men in the name of an Infallible 
Book! 

In Deuteronomy xxi. 18-21, we have the command 
to stone to death unruly and disobedient children ; and 
that, too, on the simple accusation of their parents, 
without trial. Think of the enactment of such a law 
to-day, by one of our legislatures, and its attempted 
enforcement by the civil authorities ! How long be- 
fore the public conscience would condemn it as not 
only unjust, and cruel, but horrible? In Deut. xiv. 
21, we read : " Ye shall not eat of anything that dieth 



124 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



of itself ; thou shalt give it unto the stranger that is 
in the gates, that he may eat it; or thou mayest sell 
it unto an alien." How does such a way of disposing 
of bad meat harmonize with thB golden rule ? In 
Psalm cix. we have a prayer of David, in which he im- 
plores that the most terrible calamities may be visited 
upon his enemy, and not only upon him but upon his 
children. He prays that his enemy's " days may be 
few ; " that his " children may be fatherless, and his 
wife a widow;" that his children "maybe continually 
vagabonds and beg," and that there may be " none to 
show them mercy." Elsewhere he exclaims, " happy 
shall he be who taketh and dasheth thy little ones 
against the stones ! " Was David inspired when he 
wrote these words ? If so, then it becomes a serious 
question — Was it by God or by the Devil ? 

In Leviticus xxv. 44-46, we have slavery incul- 
cated, and that too not as a temporary institution, but 
as something which was to be perpetual. " Of the 
heathen that are round about you, shall ye buy bond- 
men and bondwomen," * * * " and they shall be 
your bondmen forever." In Hosea i. 2, and iii. 1, 
the prophet is commanded in the most explicit terms 
to break the Seventh Commandment. But enough ! 
Such, then, are a few examples of sanction and incul- 
cation of what is wrong, taken almost at random from 
the far larger number that crowd themselves on the 
attention of every careful student of the Bible. 



FORCED TO GIVE UP INFALLIBILITY, 125 

Summing up. — I have now caused to pass in very 
brief review before the reader, some of the most ob- 
vious difficulties that rise up in the path of candid, 
earnest men, who, in the light of the scholarship and 
general intelligence of the time, undertake to believe 
that the Bible is a book of perfect and infallible truth. 

It is very common for preachers and religious 
teachers to charge upon men who disbelieve the infal- 
libility of the Bible, that their disbelief is something 
which they choose, and choose from bad motives — in 
other words that it is something wilful and wicked. 
I trust I have shown that this is not necessarily true. 
Men are obliged to believe that two and two make four ; 
they can't believe that two and two make five, no 
matter how hard they try. So, when they set about 
the study of the Bible with their eyes open, and find 
that it contains imperfections corresponding to the 
imperfections of the people and the times from which 
it comes down, the mere fact that they may wish still 
to regard it as perfect and infallible does not by any 
means enable them to do so. We read in an old Ger- 
man fable of a priest who was offered a bishopric if 
he would come to the conclusion that the sun was tri- 
angular. After a good deal of effort he finally suc- 
ceeded in seeing the sun to have three sides and three 
corners, instead of being round as he had before sup- 
posed. However large a class of persons there may 
be, or may not be, to-day, who can accommodate their 



126 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

vision to their wish in regard to the teachings of the 
Bible, there is a large and growing class that find it 
impossible «Jo do this. These manifold imperfections 
that I have pointed out, and multitudes of others with 
them, rise up before their vision, and, in spite of all 
their efforts to see them as perfections, persist in ap- 
pearing as imperfections. This being the case, the 
continued insistence of the church that they must see 
them to be perfections would seem a great and strange 
folly. 

Driving men into Infidelity. — Nothing can be 
more clear than that the result must be sooner or later 
to drive this class of men into hostility to the church 
and the Bible. Indeed, the fact, so much lamented 
over by the clergy and the religious press, that so many 
of the most intelligent minds of the country are already 
turning their backs upon Christianity, clearly finds an 
explanation to no small extent in the blind folly of 
Christianity in continuing to demand that men must 
subscribe to the belief in an infallible Bible or else 
stay outside the Christian fold. Why does this folly 
continue ? Is Christianity bent upon intellectual sui- 
cide ? Can it be possible that it does not see that it 
is putting itself in a position where men who read and 
think for themselves on religious subjects, have no 
alternative left them ? — they must either subscribe to 
what they do not believe to be true, or else they must 
turn their backs on Christianity ! 



A LOSING GAME. 1 27 

Something Wiser and Better. — How is it that in- 
telligent Christian men fail to see that there is no 
necessary connection whatever between belief in 
the correctness of all the statements of every kind 
contained in the Bible, and belief in the great moral 
and spiritual teachings of Isaiah and Paul and Jesus ? 
Surely, then, the part of wisdom would seem to 
be, for the churches and those who care for Chris- 
tianity, to take an entirely new departure with re- 
gard to this matter of Bible infallibility. Let them 
no longer attempt the useless, foolish, and inevita- 
bly losing game of trying longer to bolster it up. 
There is something better for them. Freely and 
without hesitancy admitting all the errors and imper- 
fections that fair and honest criticism finds in the 
Bible, let them confidently rest their claim for it upon 
the transcendent merits that the same criticism gladly 
and freely confesses it to possess. Let them say — 
" We want no one to believe what there is not ground 
for believing. We are interested, as much as you can 
be, to find out errors and imperfections, that men may 
be warned against them. It is truth that we care for ; 
especially do we care for moral and spiritual truth, the 
truth of the conscience and the heart, which is self- 
witnessing, and which men find little to dispute or 
differ over when once they begin seeking without prej- 
udice or bigotry for that." Now the moment the* 
Christian churches and Christian people generally r 



128 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

will take this position (and some of the wisest among 
them are taking it), that moment all this crushing bur- 
den of carrying the imperfections of the Bible — this 
hopeless Sisyphus task of apologizing for these imper- 
fections, and trying by hook or by crook to convince 
the intelligence of the age that they are perfections, 
is gone ; and the mental energies of Christendom are 
left free to be expended in better and more worthy 
directions. 

Relation of Religion to Science and Rational 
Scholarship. — Moreover, too, the moment this is done, 
that moment Christianity changes its attitude and re- 
lations, utterly, with reference to rational scholarship 
and science ; that is to say, that moment it ceases to 
be antagonistic to these, and assumes a position of 
friendship and co-operation. The value and impor- 
tance of this change can scarcely be over-estimated. 
Once let it be accomplished and it will be seen that 
the gain is immense in every way. As Greg, in his 
Creed of Christendom, so well says : " Religion then 
becomes safer ; Science becomes free ; the tempta- 
tion to dishonest subterfuge, so strong (under the old 
theory of an Infallible Book) that few could resist it, 
is at once removed ; and it becomes possible for di- 
vines to retain their faith, their knowledge and their 
integrity together. It is no longer necessary to har- 
monize Scripture and Science by fettering the one, or 
tampering with the other ; nor for men of Science 



AN INCUB US RE MO VED. 1 29 

and men of Theology either to stand in the position of 
antagonists, or to avoid doing so by resorting to hollow 
subtleties and transparent evasions, which cannot but 
degrade them in their own eyes, and degrade their re- 
spective professions in the eyes of the observing 
world." 

The Bible Improved as a Book of Worship and of 
Practical Religion, by giving up the Idea of its In- 
fallibility. — Nor could the surrender of the dogma 
of the infallibility of the Bible hurt the volume, as 
some fear, as a book of devotional and practical re- 
ligion. Rather, in important respects, it would help 
it as such. For, as already intimated, the loss of 
the idea of infallibility would affect not in the least 
the higher and more spiritual teachings of the Bible 
— those portions that are " profitable for doctrine, for 
reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteous- 
ness." It would be simply the letting in of a healthy 
wind to blow away such chaff as has no power to feed 
anybody : for example, the imprecations of three or 
four of the Psalms; the brutal exploits of Samson ; ex- 
aggerations like those that I have pointed out in connec- 
tion with the number of years lived by the patriarchs, 
and the number of soldiers in the armies of Jeroboam 
and Abijah ; the falsehood of Abraham when he de- 
nied that Sarah was his wife ; the various contradic- 
tions between Scripture and science ; the incredible 
stories of Jonah, and of the falling down of the walls 

9 



I 3 o WHA1 IS THE BIBLE? 

of Jericho at the sound of the ram's horns ; and all 
that class of things, which, so far from having in them 
any food for pious souls, or spiritual edification for 
anybody, are, on the contrary, found generally to be a 
hindrance to piety, and a detraction from edification 
almost in the exact degree in which men feel under 
obligation to apologize for them, and to resort to all 
sorts of expedients of interpretation in the effort to 
make them harmonize with proper notions of right- 
eousness and worthy ideas of God. 

No room for Indifference, — Thus it will be seen that 
the subject of Bible fallibility or infallibility is not 
something which we may any of us be indifferent to ; 
it is not something with reference to which the truth 
may be known or not known, and all will be the same. 
The truth is, the idea that we have in the Bible an in- 
fallible book, is a great and grave evil entrenched in 
the very heart of our Christianity ; and it is all the 
while silently working harm in many ways, both to 
our religion and our civilization.* For example, I have 
already shown that certain parts of the Bible contain 
degrading representations of God — representations of 
Him as jealous, angry, unjust, brutal, commending 
and approving such things as shock every sound 
moral nature. And yet if the Bible is infallible, of 
course all these representations are true, and God is 
just such a Being as these picture him to be. Thus we 

* See above, pp. 22, 23, 123. 



MUCH A T STAKE. i 3 1 

are driven to the alternative either of confessing that 
God is a superhuman tyrant, an infinite devil, or else 
denying that the Bible can be infallible. Does any one 
fail to see which of the two is the religions as well 
as the reasonable thing to do ? Surely there is a 
weighty and solemn religious obligation resting on us 
to deny the truth of a dogma which aims so cruel a 
blow at the character of the Being we worship, and 
the validity of our moral intuitions. The highest and 
holiest things of religion and life are very deeply at 
stake. As we care for religion, therefore, we must not 
shrink ; when we come upon representations of God in 
the Bible that are degrading and immoral, we must say, 
u They are wrong ; the men who wrote them had the 
low and imperfect ideas of their age ; we, to-day, 
standing in the light that shines from Jesus, and from 
the eighteen centuries since, worship a God vastly 
higher and better than the God of those imperfect 
old-time pictures." 

Furthermore, we have seen that the Bible sanctions 
and inculcates much that is wrong in human conduct. 
All this is harmless if we look at the Bible rationally 
— as a book that has come down to us from a far past, 
containing much of the highest wisdom and noblest 
inspiration of that past, but necessarily containing 
also not a little of its crude and imperfect morality 
which our age has outgrown. But if, on the other 
hand, we look at everything the Bible contains as 



132 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE ? 



from God and infallible, then its inculcations and ap- 
provals of evil and wrong are anything but harmless. 
The Doctrine of Infallibility an Enemy to Virtue ', 
especially among the Young. — It is the growing feeling 
of many of our wisest and soberest minds that virtue 
has few greater obstacles to contend with in our age 
than the widespread insistence on the part of the 
church that Old Testament morality is perfect moral- 
ity. Old Testament morality is not perfect morality. 
No one coming to the study of it with a mind unbi- 
assed would for a moment think of calling it perfect. 
Even the men who contend most earnestly for its per- 
fection, should they find precisely the same in one of 
the other great Bibles of the world, would, without the 
slightest hesitation, pronounce it defective. Why, 
then, is such morality set up in this day and age as 
a standard? Can it fail to do grave harm — espe- 
cially among the young ? Think of millions of Sun- 
day school children, with their young and plastic 
minds, being systematically taught from Sunday to 
Sunday, for years, such things as that it was right for 
Joshua to perpetrate his massacres of men, women 
and babes, and for Jehu to murder all the house of 
Ahab, and for Hosea to break the seventh command- 
ment, and for Moses and Aaron to lie to Pharaoh, 
and for the Jewish people to put witches to death 
and hold slaves, and the like (things, all of them, which 
we are told God commanded}, and then reflect what 



WE MUST DISCRIMINA TE. 



133 



a foundation all this lays in these millions of chil- 
dren, upon which to build virtuous characters and 
sensitive consciences, and pure and high manhood 
and womanhood ! Can anything ever compensate for, 
or make good, such an utter confusion and perversion 
of moral ideas in the minds of the young ? Can we 
expect anything else but that children thus instructed 
will have low and confused ideas of right and wrong, 
and blunted consciences, as well as unworthy concep- 
tions of God, when they grow up to be men and 
women ? 

No ! while we continue to hold earnestly to the 
Bible, we must discriminate. While we cannot ap- 
preciate too highly the rich legacy of moral and re- 
ligious truth and sentiment that comes down to us 
in its revered pages, let us not be guilty of the fatal 
folly of consecrating error because it happens to be 
associated with truth. While we may well keep 
the Bible in our Sunday schools, and churches, and 
houses, as our great, and in a true sense, our sacred 
b®ok of religion, to be studied reverently and appre- 
ciatively by ourselves and by our children, we must 
beware that we do not make it a curse instead of 
a blessing, to ourselves, and especially to them, by 
accepting it and teaching them to accept it as what it 
is not, viz., an infallible book. 



CHAPTER IV. 

INSPIRATION. REVELATION. DID THE BIBLE CRE- 
ATE RELIGION, OR RELIGION THE BIBLE ? THE 

REAL VALUE OF THE BIBLE. FRIENDS AND 

ENEMIES. 



(i35) 



" Prove all things ; hold fast that which is good."— Paul. 

" There is a common impression that the Bible has created a relig- 
ion for man by a positive enactment. The Bible has not made relig- 
ion, but religion and righteousness have made the Bible." — Prof 
Swing. 

" In holy books we read how God hath spoken 
To holy men in many different ways ; 
But hath the present worked no sign nor token ? 
Is God quite silent in these latter days ? 

" The word were but a blank, a hollow sound, 
If He that spoke it were not speaking still ; 
If all the light and all the shade around 
Were aught but issues of Almighty Will." 

— H. Coleridge. 

" The only safe way of meeting this danger (that threatens the Bi- 
ble — the danger, on the one hand, of hostility ; and, on the other, of 
indifference), is to find, as grounds for men's continued veneration and 
use of the Bible, propositions which can be verified, and which are un- 
assailable. This, then, has been our object ; to find sure and safe 
grounds for the continued use and authority of the Bible." — Matthew 
Arnold. 



(136) 



CHAPTER IV. 

Inspiration. — Revelation. — Did the Bible Cre- 
ate Religion, or Religion the Bible ? — The 
Real Value of the Bible. — Friends and En- 
emies. 

I pass on now from the subject of the infallibility 
of the Bible, to touch upon a few questions, often 
asked, which are of such importance that they ought 
to be considered here. 

I. Inspiration. — If these writings, which in their 
collective form we call the Old and New Testaments, 
are not infallible, are they inspired ? To this question 
I reply — There is not the slightest antagonism be- 
tween the views set forth in the preceding pages, 
and the idea that the Bible is a book rich with true 
and noble inspiration. What do I mean ? This is 
what I mean : " God is the life of all that lives, and 
the motion of all that moves. Every good and holy 
thought, every noble deed, every high endeavor, every 
pure aspiration, is by and through so much of God as 
works through humanity ; for without him we can do 
nothing. ' In him we live and move and have our 
(137) 



138 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

being.* So, then, inspiration is natural to the human 
soul, and its degree is determined by character and 
capacity.'' All men have it ; some more, some less, 
according as their natures are large or small, and ac- 
cording as they open their minds to truth, and their 
hearts to goodness, or refuse thus to open them. 
Touching some portions of the Bible, I have nothing 
to say about their inspiration. But when I come to 
other portions, words are all too poor to express my 
sense of the richness and glory of the inspiration that 
they reveal. From what fountain but the fountain of 
God's truest inspiration could have come any one of 
a hundred passages, from both Old Testament and 
New, that instantly flash on our minds when we think 
of what is loftiest in religion ? At what spring but 
that of the world's purest, sweetest, divinest inspira- 
tion, could all those men have drank whose words 
have sounded down the ages, thrilling the hearts of 
untold millions as human hearts have almost never 
else been thrilled ? * 

* " That ' inspiration of the Almighty, which giveth understand- 
ing/ is not a less mighty fact because we find that the writers of Scrip- 
ture had it not different in kind from that which comes to every man 
who opens his soul to receive it. It dwells in those earnest ones 
whose yearnings after the unseen found utterance in Bible, Rig- Veda, 
Zend-Avesta, Tripitaka, King (Chinese Sacred Book), and Koran, 
and it dwells in earnest souls to-day, wherever the love of truth abides. 
And for us, in whatever written or spoken word, or sound of many- 
voiced nature, we find that which speaks to our heart as true, there is 
for us an inspired truth." — Clodd. 



RE VELA TION LARGER THAN A BOOK, 1 39 

2. Revelation. — Is the Bible revelation from God ? 
Or, rather, does the Bible contain revelation from God ? 
I reply — For one, I firmly believe that it does contain 
such revelation, and that, too, in large measure and of 
inestimable value. 

I do not think there is any nation or any human 
being, through whom God does not, to a greater or 
less extent, reveal himself. Certainly, then, through 
the profoundly religious Jewish nation, and especially 
through its great seers and prophets and religious 
teachers — its Abraham, its Moses, its David, its Isa- 
iah, its Paul, and, far above any other, its Jesus — cer- 
tainly through these I cannot but regard God as hav- 
ing revealed himself most marvellously and preciously. 
The various writings that make up our Bible revela- 
tions of God ! Yes, in their several degrees ! some 
higher, some lower ; some more perfect, some less 
perfect ! Not God's only revelations, however. On 
the whole, the highest and best, doubtless, that ancient 
times produced, but not all that the world has seen. 
For shall we assert of God that he has been a God of 
partiality, choosing out of the nations of the world 
one small nation — the Hebrews — and making himself 
known to them, and to no others ? Shall we push 
aside all the other Sacred Books of the world — the 
Hindoo and Persian Bibles, both older than our own ; 
the Buddhist Bible, held to be sacred by more people 
than all who hold to the Christian Bible ; the Chinese 



140 



WHA T IS THE BIBLE ? 



Bibles, ancient and venerable books ; and the Koran, 
the Bible of some of the noblest peoples of the past 
— I say, shall we push aside all these Sacred Books, 
and declare that there is no voice of God in them ? 
For one, I dare not do that. Nor dare I deny that 
God has revealed himself through thousands of great 
and pure souls whose thoughts fill the books of all our 
libraries ; and that he is revealing himself still, and 
ever more and more fully revealing himself as the 
ages go by, in nature, from flower up to star ; in sci- 
ence, in all its wide domain ; in art, in poetry, in mu- 
sic, in history, in the mind and conscience and heart 
of man. I dare not say that any valuable knowledge, 
or any helpful truth, or any noble aspiration or inspi- 
ration or impulse, ever comes to man, but it comes 
from God, and is in just so far God revealing himself. 
God's revelation confined to a single book or set of 
books ! Why, all the books in the world are too 
small to hold God's revelation. And if book-writing 
goes on for ten thousand years, until libraries vast as 
the old library of Alexandria are multiplied as the 
stars of the sky, still the fountain of God's revelation 
will be as far as ever from running dry. Until the 
end of time — nay, until the end of eternity — wherever 
there is an eye to see, or an ear to hear, or a mind to 
apprehend, there there will be a God to reveal, and 
ever more and more fully reveal his truth. 

3. The Bible as the Producer of Religion and Mor- 



WHICH WAS FIRST. 



141 



als vs. Religion and Morals as the Producer of the Bi- 
ble. — Is or is not the Bible the source of religion and 
of morals in the world ? If there had never come into 
existence any such Bible as ours, would we have had 
any religion — that is, any true religion among men, or 
any morality ? 

Of course in the light of the preceding discussion 
these questions seem scarcely less than superfluous : 
and yet they are so often asked among certain classes of 
sincere and earnest persons, that they ought perhaps 
to be definitely met here. It will be a sufficient answer, 
however, if I simply point out in a word the bearing of 
what has gone before, upon them. Both religion 
and morals had an existence among men long before 
our Bible or any part of our Bible was born. In 
parts of the world where our Bible has never been 
heard of they have both flourished and borne beauti- 
ful fruits for thousands of years. In the earlier 
pages of this book it was shown that many of the 
purest and loftiest moral and religious teachings 
of both our Old Testament and New, are found, in 
greater or less prominence, in other Sacred Books of 
mankind, — some of those Sacred Books being of 
earlier date than our own. And when we search the 
literature and history even of peoples that did not 
have any Sacred Book at all, as for example the 
Greeks and Romans, we still find numerous exhibi- 
tions of noble virtues : while as to piety, we find also 



Iz]2 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



much of that, of such kind as we cannot but feel to be 
pervaded with the spirit of true and pure worship. 

Thus we see that instead of our Bible being the 
original fountain and creator of morals and true re- 
ligion in the word — that is to say, instead of morals 
and true religion depending for their existence in the 
world upon the previous existence of our Bible — as so 
many persons seem to think — the very opposite of 
this is true. It was morality and religion in the world 
- — ever growing and developing — ever struggling from 
dimness and confusion and weakness in men's minds 
toward greater definiteness and strength — that pro- 
duced our Bible, and all the other Bibles of mankind. 
And if our Bible, and all the rest of the now existing 
Bibles, were destroyed, religion and morality would 
produce others, and others, so long as others were 
needed. The foundations of virtue and religion are 
not in any book, but in God y in the Nature of Things, 
in the Soul of Man. Not but that the Bible, once 
produced, has helped, and helped most efficiently, to 
carry forward the religious and moral development 
of the nations among whom it has come : so that, as 
a rule, these nations owe very much to it, and would 
have had a very different history morally and re- 
ligiously if it had never made its appearance among 
them. Indeed, we may call our Bible in a certain 
true sense the fountain from which the particular 
form of religion known as Christianity has come, — 



TEST OF MORAL TRUTH. 



143 



just as we may call the Vedas in a certain true sense 
the fountain from which the form of religion known 
as Brahmanism has come. Nevertheless the words 
of Prof. Swing are true : " The Bible has not made 
religion ; but religion and righteousness have made 
the Bible." 

4. Distinguishing the True from the False — the 
Inspired from the Uninspired, in the Bible. — If there 
are errors and imperfections in the Bible — that is to 
say, if the Bible is not all infallible inspiration, how 
are we to know what parts are true and inspired, and 
what parts are untrue and uninspired — in other words, 
what parts we should keep and what parts we should 
cast out ? This question, I know, often causes real 
trouble to earnest and conscientious minds, and yet it 
seems strange that it should ; for the answer is surely 
very simply and plain. With reference to all scien- 
tific and historical questions, and all questions oifaet, 
connected with the Bible, doubtless we are to find 
out what is truth and what is not truth in exactly the 
same way that we find out truth and falsehood any- 
where else, viz. — by inquiry and investigation. By 
honest inquiry, and candid investigation, almost all 
the more important of these questions of fact can 
doubtless be solved. That so many remain still un- 
solved, is undoubtedly due in large measure to the fact 
that as yet so little really honest and unbiassed in- 
vestigation has been made. If a tithe of the time 



i44 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



and energy of mind that have been consumed in an- 
athematizing heretics, and trying to bolster up this 
and that purely speculative theory about the Bible, 
had been spent in honest endeavors to find out the 
truth, whatever it might be, a thousand questions 
which are still in dispute concerning the Bible, would 
long ere this have been settled. 

As to the way we are to find out what we should 
accept and what reject in the direction of the moral 
teachings of the Bible, the matter is even simpler 
still. Indeed there is not and never has been any 
serious difficulty on this score — certainly not to per- 
sons who study the Bible earnestly and rationally. 
The great leading doctrines of morality are clear and 
unmistakable. They are written in the very nature 
of man ; and as the race advances to higher and more 
perfect civilization these come out into greater and 
greater distinctness ; and that, too, even where men 
have never known anything of our Bible. Certainly, 
then, it is a strange thing if we, in the midst of the 
highest civilization that the world has ever seen, 
require to have a Bible that is supernaturally infallible 
in order to know virtue from vice, and the noble from 
the base in human conduct. When we read other 
books we find no difficulty, as a rule, in forming a 
judgment as to what in them is excellent and admira- 
ble, and what is degrading and wrong. Why, then, 
should we find it difficult, in reading the Bible, to de- 



TEST OF SPIRITUAL TRUTH. 



145 



cide between the morally good, and the morally bad 
in it ? 

And so, too, with regard to the great spiritual 
teachings of the Bible — these also all carry their 
credentials and authority in themselves. Such 
utterances as the Golden Rule, the Beatitudes, and 
Paul's chapter on Charity, it is impossible that men 
should mistake about. The whole matter reduces 
just to this — and nothing could be simpler — whatever 
in the Bible, as men read it, helps them, strengthens 
them, gives them nobler conceptions of God, in- 
creases their faith in humanity, widens their sympa- 
thies, purifies their desires, deepens their earnestness, 
brightens their hope, sends them forth with a more 
abiding consecration to the true, the beautiful and 
the good, is certainly of God — and is to be received 
as such with as much assurance as if it were .spoken 
to every one by an audible voice from ' the skies. 
Whereas, on the other hand, whatever is in the Bible, 
or anywhere else, that tends to degrade men's con- 
ceptions of God, or confuse moral distinctions, or 
lower their ideals of life or standards of duty, or dim 
their spiritual vision, is certainly not of God— and no 
ecclesiastical consecration or sanction, and no alleged 
attestation of miracles, or anything else, can make it 
their duty to do anything else than reject it.* 

* " There is no danger that we shall not know what is true when we 
see it. The sane reason cannot reject it. * The true,' says Novalis, 

IO 



I46 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

Place the Beatitudes side by side with the impreca- 
tions of the 109th Psalm ; or the story of treacherous 
Jael secretly murdering one whom she ought to have 
befriended, beside the parable of the good Samaritan ; 
or Solomon's utterance, " Man has no pre-eminence 
over a beast," beside John's declaration, " Beloved now 
are we the sons of God ;" and is there any difficulty in 
understanding which is from above and which is not 
from above ? The simple truth is, when men take up 
the Bible to read it as they would any other book, with- 
out any infallibility theories to disturb their common 
sense or introduce confusion into their judgments, 
the trouble we are considering almost or altogether 
disappears,— the practical difficulty of knowing what 
in the Bible to accept and what to reject, which, viewed 
from a distance, seems to some so great a difficulty, 
melts away into thin air, and is found to have been 
really little* more than a theological dream. 

5. The Bible as compared with other Books. — Is 
the Bible, then, to be placed on the same level with 
other books? To this question I reply, in accord 
with what I have more than once in the preceding 
pages intimated — The most authoritative criticism 
seems, with almost perfect unanimity, to answer, No ! 

* is that which we cannot help believing.' It is the perceptio per so/am 
essentia?n of Spinoza. It asks not faith, nor yet testimony ; it stands 
in need of neither." Brinton's "Religious Sentiment." p. 41. Says 
Coleridge : " Whatever finds me, bears witness of itself that it has 
proceeded from a Holy Spirit." 



HIGHEST MOUNTAIN-PEAKS ARE FEW. 147 

Though there are in the world many cataracts, there 
is only one Niagara ; though there are many coun- 
tries that have produced noble art, yet is there only 
one Greece ; though all nations and ages have had 
their poets, yet the world has produced but one Shake- 
speare. So, though there are many lands that have 
given birth to great and noble religions, it seems not 
to be invidious to say that there is only one Palestine ; 
and though in connection with these various religions 
have appeared many great and pure religious teachers, 
yet has the race produced but one Jesus. Nature is 
always sparing of her very best products, whether in 
the world of matter or of mind. Evidently her best 
moral and spiritual product of that old world from 
which all our great religions and the deepest streams 
of our moral and spiritual life have come, appeared in 
Judea and Galilee, and is represented in this collec- 
tion of Hebrew religious literature which we call our 
Bible. 

6. The Real Value of the Bible. — One other ques- 
tion, often asked, and as important to be considered 
as any that have gone before, remains to be noticed, 
viz. : In what does the value of the Bible consist ? 
Why should we, living in this late day — in times and 
circumstances of life so far removed from those of the 
Bible, and enjoying so much greater intellectual light 
than the men who wrote it enjoyed, continue to read 



148 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

it, and study it, and give it the place of honor among 
our books of religion ? 

I reply — The value of the Bible is many-sided — its 
claims upon our attention, our appreciation, and our 
reverence, are not one, but many. 

(i.) The Bible as a Literary Production, — Portions 
of the Bible, at least, have confessedly a high literary 
value. It seems to be the judgment of the most com- 
petent critics that certain books of both the Old Testa- 
ment and the New are not out of place side by side 
with the best literary productions of any age or coun- 
try. There is no lack of authorities who rank some 
of the Psalms with the lyrics of Pindar and Words- 
worth ; the Book of Job with the tragedies of Sopho- 
cles and Shakespeare ; the Prophecy of Isaiah and the 
Epistle to the Romans with any religious or ethical 
writing in the world. Probably few persons will dis- 
pute with me when I call the Bible as a whole, as it 
exists in the hands of the people to-day, in the com- 
mon English version, our greatest and noblest Eng- 
lish classic. The first translation of the Bible into 
the vernacular was made so early, and so soon there- 
after it became so emphatically the one great book of 
the people, that it has exerted an influence in mould- 
ing the English language, and indeed English litera- 
ture, vastly greater than any other book. We may 
almost say that the English language of to-day is 
formed on the basis of King James's translation of 



THE BIBLE AND CIVILIZATION. 



149 



161 1. Probably quite nine scholars out of ten, of those 
best qualified to judge, if called upon to select the 
best model in the language, of simple, terse, vigorous, 
and at the same time elegant, English, would choose 
the Bible, in our common translation. 

(2.) The Bible Interwoven indissohibly zvith every 
Phase and Department of our Civilization. — The Bible 
occupies a far more central and important place in 
European and American civilization than any other 
book. Indeed it is doubtful if a man voyaging through 
our modern Christendom as a student of its history, 
its literature, its philosophy, its art, its politics, its 
institutions, would find himself so much inconve- 
nienced by being unacquainted with Homer, Plato, 
Virgil, Cicero, Dante, and enough others to make a 
good dozen of the greatest writers of the world, out- 
side of the Bible, as he would by being unacquainted 
with the single volume of our Sacred Scriptures. 

In nothing, perhaps, does this more plainly appear 
than in art. Going through the great art galleries of 
Christendom one finds that the art of whole ages, and 
some of these the most productive since classic Rome 
and Athens, is well-nigh exclusively occupied with 
Bible themes. So closely was the art of Europe, from 
the fall of Rome until very recent times, allied with 
the Christian Religion, that a knowledge of gravita- 
tion is scarcely more essential to an understanding of 



ISO 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



astronomy or physics, than is a knowledge of the 
Bible to an understanding of European art as a whole. 

But a careful student of European literature, 
history, philosophy, politics, and institutions will 
hardly be willing to say that the Bible has a less close 
connection with any of these than with art. Its con- 
nection with these may not be so direct and easy to 
trace, as with art, but as we look deeply into the heart 
of things, we discover that it is really scarcely less 
intimate. 

(3.) The Bible as a History of the Evolution of 
Religion. — We have in the Bible a far more vivid 
and impressive picture than can be found anywhere 
else in literature, of what I may call the evolution 
of religion and morals on a large scale. The Bible 
presents us with the literary memorials of the growth 
of the people of Israel, through ten or twelve cen- 
turies of varied and wonderful history, from ideas of 
God and worship and morality that were at best 
very low and poor, up into such ideas as those taught 
by Jesus, which are confessed to stand in the front 
rank of the loftiest religious and ethical teachings of 
the world. Indeed I have pointed out what would 
seem to be proof that the Jewish people, even 
for centuries after Moses, continued to worship 
to a considerable extent other gods as well as 
Jehovah ; * held conceptions of Jehovah some of which 

* See pp. 45-48, note. 



EVOLUTION. 



151 



were very low and degrading ; * did not believe 
(so far as we can find out) in the Immortality of 
the Soul ; f practiced in war most shocking bar- 
barities ; % and even, there is only too much evi- 
dence for believing, offered their own children as 
religious sacrifices.§ But all this by degrees passes 
away ; and we have in the Bible a many-sided 
and most instructive picture of the nation's ad- 
vance all the way from this darkness to the splen- 
did light of the gospels — where one deity has taken 
the place of many ; God has become the holy, 
loving " Heavenly Father " of all the race ; worship 
has grown to be, no longer a thing of cruel, bloody 
rites, but the sincere homage of affectionate hearts ; 
and the doctrine of Immortality has come forward into 
distinctness and prominence. || In other words, as we 

* See pp. 70-74, 120-123. t See pp. 74, 75. 

\ See the account of the maiming of the three score and ten 
kings, Judges i. 6, 7 ; also Samuel's word to Saul as he went away 
to battle — " Spare no Amalekite, slay man and woman, infant and 
suckling," I. Samuel xv. 3 ; also the hewing of King Agag in pieces by 
Samuel, I. Sam. xv. 8, 33 ; also the indiscriminate, wholesale massacre 
of men, women and helpless children in the conquest of Canaan, 
Deut. xx. 16, 17; Joshua viii. 18-29; x. 28-41. Numbers xxi. 35; 
xxxi. 17, 18. 

§ See pp. 46-48, note. 

|| The ordinary reader of the Bible in the form in which it comes 
down to us has difficulty in tracing in any satisfactory manner 
the steps of this development ; indeed he discovers much that seems 
to militate against any such idea of development, in the fact that some 
of the highest religious utterances and noblest conceptions of God, in 



152 



WHA T IS THE BIBLE f 



study the Bible in the light of candid and rational 
scholarship we see Israel passing before our eyes 
through all the steps of progress, from (shall we not 
say ? ) a degraded polytheism, to the highest religious 
development attained by any ancient people. It is 
easy to perceive what an invaluable legacy the religious 
world has in such a history of religious evolution on 
such a scale. We speak of the growth of the Eng- 
lish Constitution as something marvellous, and the 
history of it which comes down to us as perhaps the 

the Bible, are found in those books that seem to come down from the 
earliest ages. But if he will begin studying the results of the best 
biblical scholarship he will soon find out that the case is very differ- 
ent from what appears on the surface. He will learn, as has been 
shown in the preceding pages, that (i) the books of the Bible do not 
stand in our version in the order of their dates; (2) those books that 
deal with the earliest events in point of time, were written in the form 
in which we have them now, comparatively late in the history of the 
Jewish nation; (3) a large part of the books are compilations, contain- 
ing fragments of different ages. These facts learned, the way is clear 
before him for an examination of the question as to whether the his- 
tory of Israel does or does not reveal a moral and religious progress, 
development, evolution, such as I have described. Let him now take 
up such a work as Kuenen's " Religion of Israel," or Ewald's " His- 
tory of Israel," and see how, as the result of incredible labor and 
painstaking, these great scholars have unravelled the difficulties that 
surrounded the subject, and traced the different books and fragments 
to the ages which really produced them, and he will soon discover, 
not only how many and strong are the proofs of the advance and de- 
velopment claimed, but how clearly marked both as to point of time 
and manner of accomplishment are many of the more important steps 
of that development. 



THE PARENT OF MONOTHEISM. 



153 



most valuable political bequest that the past has 
made to the English-speaking world. Somewhat 
such a bequest as this, only far more valuable, does 
the religious world have in the history of the growth 
of religion as portrayed in our Old and New Testa- 
ments. 

(4.) The Bible and Monotheism, — The Bible is the 
parent of Monotheism in the world, so far as a book 
can be. It is worthy of note that the three great 
monotheistic religions, all send back their roots di- 
rectly or indirectly into our Scriptures — Judaism and 
Christianity directly, and Mohammedanism indirectly. 
We are apt to give the Bible credit for nothing only 
what allies itself with Christianity. This is wrong. 
Judaism is a noble religion, and has exerted, not only 
before the Christian Era but since, a great influence 
in the world. When all is known that history has to 
tell us, it will probably appear that our modern 
civilization is more indebted to Israel than we have 
been willing to confess, not only as regards religion 
but as regards commerce, education, science and 
letters.* 

* For an account of the great influence exercised by the Jews in 
Rome and throughout the Roman empire during the early Christian 
centuries, see Prof. Huidekoper's " Judaism in Rome." 

For the work they did in the middle ages in founding and endowing 
universities, and promoting science, especially medical science, see 
"Draper's Intellectual Development of Europe," pp. 414, 417 (Harpers' 
Ed.). But perhaps never since the destruction of Jerusalem have the 
Jews been so prosperous or influential in the world as now. 



154 



WHA T IS THE BIBLE ? 



So, too, Mohammedanism is in some respects at 
least a noble religion ; and certainly its influence, not 
only upon the world's religious history, but also upon 
its intellectual and political, has been very powerful 
and far-reaching ; and if we may trust the accounts 
that come to us from Asia and Africa, it is to-day 
spreading in the world more rapidly than even Chris- 
tianity. 

But Mohammedanism can be understood only very 
imperfectly without a knowledge of the Bible — so truly 
the child of the Bible as well as of the Koran is it ; 
while Judaism cannot be understood at all without a 
knowledge of the Old Testament. 

It is most remarkable that one book should thus 
be so closely related to the three great monotheistic 
religions of the world. This fact alone may justly be 
claimed as giving our Bible a pre-eminence over all 
the other Sacred Books of mankind. 

(5 .) The Bible as a Book of Practical Religion. — But 
it is not until we come to study the Bible as a book of 
practical religion, or condiict, that after all we approach 
its highest value. With all its imperfections, it must 
still be confessed to be, on the whole, a book of 
unequalled moral earnestness, incitement, inspiration. 
With an iteration and reiteration that is untiring, and 
with an emphasis that is sometimes fairly tremendous, 
do all the greater writers of the Bible impress upon 
us the grandeur of the moral side of life — the impor- 



RIGHTEOUSNESS. 1 5 5 

tance of justice, truth, mercy, but especially righteous- 
ness in human conduct. A body of men of deeper 
moral earnestness, or more brave and loyal to what 
they believed to be true and right in religion, perhaps 
the world never saw, than were the old Testament 
prophets. Bigoted sometimes ; coarse and cruel 
sometimes ; true children of a rude age, some of 
them ; occupying very different planes, morally and 
spiritually, as well as intellectually and socially, — they 
yet, as a whole, were grand men, whose words are 
even to-day moral bugle-calls to the race. 

Matthew Arnold has said — " So long as the world 
lasts, all who want to make progress in righteousness 
will come to Israel for Inspiration, as to the people 
who have had the sense for Righteousness most 
glowing and strongest ; and in hearing and reading 
th'e words which Israel has uttered for us, carers for 
conduct will find a glow and a force which they 
could find nowhere else. As well imagine a man 
with a sense for sculpture not cultivating it by the 
help of the remains of Greek art, or a man with a 
sense for poetry not cultivating it by the help of 
Homer and Shakespeare, as a man with a sense for 
conduct (that is righteousness or virtue) not cultiva- 
ting it by the help of the Bible." 

(6.) The Bible as a Book of Spiritual Consolation 
and Quickening. — So, too, with regard to all that which 
we commonly call the spiritual side of life — that side 



156 WHAT IS THE BIBLE l 

of life which includes love, gratitude, reverence, 
prayer, hope, faith, aspiration, worship — it is not too 
much to say that the world has produced no book 
which* has proved itself more powerful, if any has 
proved itself equally powerful, as a help and inspirer 
of men on this side of their being. Such passages as 
the Sermon on the Mount, the thirteenth chapter of 
First Corinthians, the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth 
and seventeenth chapters of John, the fifteenth chap- 
ter of Luke, the eighth chapter of Romans, the fifth 
and sixth chapters of Ephesians, the twenty-third, 
twenty-seventh, thirty-seventh, one hundred and third, 
one hundred and thirty-ninth, and a score more 
Psalms, and selections from the last sixteen chapters 
of Isaiah, are spiritual food than which the voice 
of the ages declares there has been no richer given 
to the race. They are fountains which never run 
dry, but which, repair to them often as they would, 
untold millions have found always full of water 
for the soul's deepest thirst. 

" We search the world for truth, we cull 
The good, the pure, the beautiful 
From graven stone and written scroll, 
From the old flower-fields of the soul ; 
And, weary seekers of the best, 
We come back laden from our quest, 
To find that all the sages said, 
Is in the book our mother's read." • 

These words of Whittier, as applied to the moral, 



SACRED ASSOCIATIONS. 



iS7 



but especially as applied to what I have called the 
more purely spiritual, teachings of the Bible, are 
scarcely too strong. 

Furthermore, also, they suggest one other thing 
about the Bible — perhaps not often enough thought of 
— which to multitudes gives it, and will always con- 
tinue with good reasons to give it, if not a higher, at 
least a more tender and heart-felt value than it could 
ever otherwise have. I refer to the fact that our Bible 
is the book " our mothers read " — in other words, that 
it is a book which has come down to us all, as the one 
great, sacred book of the Christian ages, hallowed 
by the dearest and grandest of associations and 
memories. It is not only our book of religion, but it is 
a book rich with the very life-blood of all that was 
highest and holiest in the hopes and fears, the joys 
and sorrows, the faiths, the prayers, the aspirations a7id 
yearnings, of our fathers , and otir father s fathers, and 
nearly all the noblest men and saintliest women of 
all the Christian ages. How much that means, only 
men's hearts, not their heads, can answer ! Surely 
such a book, with all its shortcomings, may well lay 
heavy claims upon our love, our appreciation, our 
reverence. 

Here, then, in as much detail and carried out in 
as many directions as space will allow, we have our 
answer to the questions — In what does the value of 
the Bible consist ? Why should we, in our day, con- 



158 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

tinue to read and study it, and give it the place of 
highest and peculiar honor among our literature ? 
We see its value to be various, many-sided, far-reach- 
ing, deep-reaching, tangible, real, and in no sense 
dependent upon any theory of miraculous infallibility 
concerning it. 

Concluding Words. — Real Friends and Real Ene- 
mies of the Bible. — Of course I cannot be unaware that 
it will be said by some that, in giving expression to 
such thoughts as are found in the preceding pages, 
I am trying to overthrow the Bible. 

In reply, I have only to say that the exact opposite 
of this is true. I am trying to save the Bible. We 
may as well open our eyes to the fact that, if the Bible 
is to be saved to the less credulous and more intel- 
ligent and independently thinking ages that are to 
follow us, it must be by letting the truth be known. 
There is one basis upon which it can stand as long as 
time endures, and stand safe from every assault, and 
that is the basis of fact — the basis of what it really is 
— the basis of the shining and transcendent excellen- 
cies which, aside from and entirely independent of its 
manifold defects, it clearly possesses. But there is 
no other basis upon which it can stand. We hear 
much said about " friends " and " enemies " of the 
Bible. There are no such enemies of anything as 
foolish and short-sighted friends. Does any one say 
that I and others with me, who believe in telling 



TRUTH IS SAFETY, 



159 



candidly the truth about these things, are enemies of 
the Bible ? We are not ; we are friends of the Bible. 
They are the enemies of the Bible who insist on keep- 
ing it standing upon a fictitious basis, which tends 
ever to melt away before free thought and candid 
investigation, as ice melts before fire. They are the 
enemies of the Bible who refuse to allow men to dis- 
criminate, judge, apply tests of reason and common 
sense — who say such utterly senseless things as that 
the Bible is "either all true or all false," and that we 
must " either believe it all, from cover to cover, or else 
throw it all away." If the array of facts, of so many 
and varied kinds, exhibited in the preceding pages, 
proves anything, it proves that the Bible isn't either 
all true or all a lie. Ten thousand things in it are 
true, and grandly true — but some things in it are not 
true. We are not necessitated, either to believe it 
all or else throw it all away, any more than I am 
necessitated to tear down a beautiful picture from my 
walls because there are scratches or dust specks on 
it, or turn my mother out of my house, because, with 
all her wealth of tenderness and love and goodness, 
there may be possible flaws or imperfections in her 
character, as there are flaws and imperfections in the 
character of us all. There is no such alternative exist- 
ing as that the Bible must be accepted as a whole or 
else rejected as a whole. To say that there is, is as 
great folly as it would be to say that men must either 



l6o WHAT IS THE BIBLE ? 

give up the use of corn as food, or else consume it husks 
and all ; and wheat, or else consume it chaff and all. 

This alternative is usually insisted on with the 
thought that men will of course shrink from giving 
the Bible all up, and therefore the pressing of this 
alternative, it is thought, will compel them to accept 
all of the Bible as the only thing left that they can 
do. It is a sort of thumb-screw arrangement, by which 
it is supposed men can be forced to adopt the theory 
of infallibility. But what really are the results ? 
Really, how many minds are thus forced to what their 
judgments rebel against? Doubtless, among the 
weaker and more timid and less conscientious, con- 
siderable numbers. But among conscientious minds, 
and especially minds of strength and independence, 
very few indeed. Far more of these are forced by the 
alternative to go the other road, and throw the Bible 
all away. They say, We can't eat husks with our corn, 
or chaff with our wheat ; therefore, if you will not let 
us make any separation, all must go — wheat and corn 
as well as husks and chaff. Thus do the short-sighted 
friends of the Bible, by insisting upon infallibility or 
nothing, defeat their purpose, and drive multitudes of 
our best minds not only away from the Bible, but even 
away from religion. 

Probably there is no truer conception of the Bible 
than as a gold mine — a gold mine inestimably rich — 
yet a mine still. There are quartz and earth in no 



FOLLY AND WISDOM. 161 

small measure mixed with the gold, as in all mines ; 
but there is also gold — true gold of God, more pre- 
cious than we shall ever fully find out — mixed plenti- 
fully with the quartz and the earth. Evidently, then, 
the part of rational men and women is, neither to re- 
sort to the folly on the one hand, of declaring that 
the quartz and earth are gold, nor yet the equal folly 
on the other hand, of throwing away all, and declaring 
there is no gold, because they can plainly see quartz 
and earth with the gold ; but the part of rational men 
and women surely is to delve earnestly in the mine, 
casting out, without hesitation, what plainly is not 
gold, but saving and treasuring up, with glad apprecia- 
tion and thankfulness, rich stores of what clearly is 
gold. 

n 



APPENDIX. 

List of Books that may be read or referred to with 
advantage by persons desiring to get further informa- 
tion up 071 the subjects treated in the following pages : — 
with prices and brief expla7iatory a7id critical comments. 

Allen, J. H. — "Hebrew Men and Times?' i2mo, 
$1.50. A very good and interesting account of 
the Hebrew people " from the Patriarchs to the 
Messiah." To some extent a summary of 
Ewald's " History of Israel." 

Amberley, Viscount. — " Analysis of Religious Be- 
lief ^ London, 2 vols. Am. Ed. 1 vol. 8vo, $3.00. 
A book of comparative religion. Describes re- 
ligious rites, gives accounts of all the important 
sacred books and founders of religions of the 
world, and seeks to analyze the religious senti- 
ment, pointing out what is actually true in it, and 
what objective basis it has. Full of valuable in- 
formation, though not the highest authority. 

Apocryphal New Testament. i2mo, $1.25. A 
collection of Gospels, Epistles, etc., now extant, 
attributed in the first four centuries to Jesus 
(163) 



1 64 APPENDIX. 

Christ, his Apostles, and their companions, but 
not included in the New Testament by its com- 
pilers. 

Arnold, Matthew. — " Literature ct7id Dogma" and 
"God and the Bible" each i2mo, $1.50. Treat 
such subjects as " The New Testament Record ; " 
"The Fourth Gospel ; " "The Bible Canon ;" 
" Proof of Religion from Miracles and Prophecy ; " 
"The True Greatness of the Bible and Chris- 
tianity," and " How to save the Bible to the 
* Masses/ " Extremely radical, and yet in their 
way thoroughly constructive. Very fresh and 
powerful. 

Baring-Gould, Rev. S. — " Legends of Old Testamejtt 
Characters, from the Talmud and other Sources/' 
i2mo, $2.00. Interesting and suggestive. 

Baur, F. C. — " Paul the Apostle of yesus Christ, his 
Life and Work, his Epistles and Doctrine!' A 
contribution to a Critical History of Primitive 
Christianity. Translated from the German by 
Rev. Allan Menzies. Published by Williams and 
Norgate, London. 3 vols.; per vol. $5.25. The 
ablest work on the Life and Teachings of Paul 
that has appeared from the most advanced critical 
school. " 

Bleek, F. — "Introduction to the Old Testament" 
Translation from the German. 2 vols, crown 8vo, 
$9.00. " Introduction to the New Testament? 'from 



APPENDIX. jgj 

the German, 2 vols. 8vo, $6.00. Scholarly, moder- 
ate, valuable. 

Brinton, D. G. " The Religious Sentiment" i2mo, 
$2.50. Discusses the development of Religion 
among peoples of low civilization. Fresh and 
suggestive, but somewhat one-sided. 

Child, L. Maria. " Pfogress of Religious Ideas!' 
among all the Principal Nations of the World, and 
through Successive Ages. 3 vols. $6.00. Not 
abreast with present scholarship, but candid, ap- 
preciative and on the whole very valuable. 
" Aspirations of the World!' i2mo, $1.25. The 
best popular collection of Gems from the great 
religious teachers of the world. 

Clarke, James Freeman. " Ten Great Religious!' 
i2mo, $3.00. Gives a brief, comprehensive account 
of Buddhism, Brahmanism, Mohammedanism, 
Parsism, Judaism, Christianity, and the religions 
of China, ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, and 
Scandinavia. For popular study the best single 
work covering this ground. 

Clodd, Edward. " Childhood of Religions!' i6mo, 
#1.25. Covers in a briefer way still, much of the 
ground trodden by J. F. Clarke in his " Ten Great 
Religions." As fascinating as a story, yet relia- 
ble. The best short introduction to the study 
of the religions of the world, especially for the 
young. 



1 66 APPENDIX. 

Colenso, Bishop. " Lectures on the Pentateuch, and 
the Moabite Stone; with three Appendices contain- 
ing I. The Elohistic Narrative ; II. The Original 
Story of Exodus ; III The Pre-Christian Cross T 
8vo, $6.00. " The Pentateuch and the Book of 
yoshua Critically Examined" i2mo, $3.00. Both 
able, candid, critical. 

Conway, M. D. "Sacred Anthology: A Book of 
Ethnical Scriptures." i2mo, $2.00. A valuable 
volume of Selections from the Sacred Writings 
of the Orient — including Chinese, Parsi, Hindoo, 
Buddhist, Mohammedan, Hebrew, Christian, and 
others. 

Curtis, Prof. T. F. " The Human Element in Inspira- 
tion." i2mo, $2.00. Aims to show that the Inspira- 
tion of the Bible is not of such a character as to 
insure Infallibility. Scholarly, popular. Stand- 
point moderate orthodox. 

Davidson, Dr. S. "Introduction to the Old Testa- 
ment." 2 vols. 8vo, $21.00. Critically examines 
each book of the Old Testament as to its date, 
authorship, historical value, general contents, etc. 
" Introduction to the New Testament!' 2 vols. 8vo, 
$15.00. Does the same for the New Testament 
that the former work does for the Old. Decidedly 
the best Introductions to the Bible. Candid. 
Standpoint rationalistic. No authority higher. 
" The Canon of the Bible!' i6mo, $2.50. An 



APPENDIX. 167 

account of the formation, history and fluctuations 
of the Old and New Testament canons ; critical 
and yet popular. The best short work on the 
canon. (The same, abridged, appears in the 9th 
Ed. of the Encyclopedia Britannica, art. Canon). 

Denton, Wm. " The Irreconcilable Records ; or Gene- 
sis and Geology;" pamphlet, 80 pp., 25 cts. 
" The Deluge in the Light of Modern Science ;" 
pamphlet, 36 pp. 10 cents. Published by Wm. 
Denton, and for sale by Colby & Rich, 9 Mont- 
gomery PL, Boston. Clear and strong statements 
of the difficulties in the way of harmonizing the 
Genesis records with modern science. 

Draper, J. W. " Conflict Between Religion and 
Science? i2mo, #1.75. History of the opposition 
which Christian theology has made in the differ- 
ent 'ages to the advancement of Science. 

Edkins, Joseph, D. D. " Religion in China; Contain- 
ing a Brief Account of the Three Religions of 
the Chinese ; with Observations on the Prospects 
of Christian Conversion among that People." 
8vo, $2.50. Perhaps as good a popular account 
as has appeared of the religions of China. Writ- 
ten from the Evangelical Christian stand-point, 
but candid. 

Encyclopedia Britannica. Ninth Edition. The 
articles on Biblical and religious subjects in the 
new edition of this work are worthy of especial 



168 APPENDIX. 

attention, as being on the whole not only more 
full, but more unbiassed, and better up with the 
latest scholarship, than those found in any simi- 
lar English or American work. Notice particu- 
larly articles by Dr. S. Davidson and Prof. W- 
Robertson Smith on the " Canon," the " Bible/' 
and other kindred biblical subjects; also articles 
on the various extra-Christian religions and great 
religious teachers. 

Ewald. " History of Israel? Translated from the 
German by Russell Martineau, 5 vols. 8vo, $31.25. 
An elaborate history of the Hebrew people, re- 
ligion, institutions and literature, to the time of 
Christ. A masterly work by perhaps the greatest 
biblical scholar that Germany has produced. Ad- 
vanced (not extreme) in theories, conservative 
and thoroughly constructive in spirit. 

Farrar, Canon. " Seekers after God? i2mo, $1.75. 
A very interesting account of Seneca, Marcus 
Aurelius and Antoninus, showing in how many 
respects they were at one with Jesus and Paul. 
Fascinating and reliable. 

Fiske, John, Prof. " The Unseen World? i2mo, 
pp. 349, $2.00. Contains two valuable essays on 
" The Jesus of History," and " the Christ of Dog- 
ma ; " written from the standpoint of the advanced 
German criticism. 

Frothingham, O. B. "The Cradle of Christ : A 



APPENDIX. j6 9 

Study in Primitive Christianity." 8vo, $1.75. 
Largely follows the Tubingen (extreme critical) 
school, in dealing with the Gospels, but in an in- 
dependent way. Regards the accounts of Jesus 
as mostly mythical ; argues that very little, if any- 
thing, can really be known of the history of such 
a person. Aims to be comprehensive and popu- 
lar rather than minute and critical. Eloquent 
and interesting. 

Gibbon, Edward. " History of the Decline and Fall 
of Rome!' Chapters L., LI., and LII. give a very 
complete and masterly account of Mahomet, and 
the rise of Mohammedanism. 

Greg, W. R. " The Creed of Christendom!' 2 vols. 
8vo, $5.00. Treats of the inspiration of the 
Bible, the authorship and authority of the Penta- 
teuch, the Old Testament canon, the prophecies 
and miracles of the Bible, the origin of the Gos- 
pels, the resurrection of Jesus, etc. Standpoint, 
rationalistic. Not quite up with present scholar- 
ship in some points, but able, candid, interesting, 
and full of fine ideas about the origin of the 
Bible religions and the value of their doctrines. 
For popular use an exceedingly valuable book. 

Goldziher, Ignaz. " Mythology among the Hebrews, 
and its Historical Development!'' Translated from 
the German, by Russell Martineau, 8vo, $8.00. 
The writer probably carries his mythical theories 



lyo APPENDIX. 

too far, and many of his conclusions seem fanci- 
ful. Yet he shows almost to a certainty that the 
mythical element enters into the Old Testament, 
and that at least the earlier books abound in 
myths. 

Hanson, Sir Richard. " The Jesus of History? 
8vo, pp. 426. London, Williams and Norgate, 
1869, 12s. This work was published anony- 
mously, but it is now known to have been written 
by Sir R. Hanson, Chief Justice of South Aus- 
tralia. Says Prof. John Fiske : "Asa historical 
essay it possesses extraordinary merit. To say 
that it throws more light on the career of Jesus 
than any work which has ever before been writ- 
ten in English would be very inadequate praise. 
We shall convey a more just idea of its merits if 
we say that it will bear comparison with anything 
which even Germany has produced, save only the 
works of Strauss, Baur and Zeller." 

Hedge, Dr. F. H. "The Primeval World of Hebrew 
Tradition." i6mo, $1.50. A series of brief, 
scholarly discourses, drawing out in a charming 
way the religious lessons of the Genesis legends. 

Higginson, Edward. " The Spirit of the Bible." 2 
vols. i2mo. Presents the conservative Unitarian 
opinions about the writing and collecting of the 
Bible books. A good work ; popular rather than 
critical or scholarly. 



APPENDIX. 



171 



Higginson, T. W. " The Sympathy of Religions! 7 
Pamphlet, published by the Free Religious Assn. 
Boston, 40 pp. 10 cents. An excellent mono- 
graph on the brotherhood and common charac- 
teristics of the Religions of the World. 

Johnson, Samuel. " Oriental Religions!' Vol. I., 
"India" 8vo, $5.00. Vol. II., "China" 8vo, 
$5.00. Very full and suggestive in their discus- 
sion of the growth and philosophy of religion. 
Perhaps not so useful as they would be if they 
dealt more with facts, and gave a greater amount 
of distinct information about the religions they 
discuss, instead of running so largely to specula- 
tions and generalizations. Yet, on the whole, 
probably the most valuable treatises we have on 
the religions of these two countries. 

Keim, Dr. T. " History of yesus of Nazara" From 
the German. 3 vols., per vol. $5.25. (Williams 
& Norgate, London.) The most elaborate and 
exhaustive work on the Life of Jesus that has 
appeared from the advanced critical school. 

Knappert, J. " The Religion of Israel: A Manual" 
Translated from the Dutch. i6mo, $1.00. By 
far the best brief account of the origin and de- 
velopment of the religion of Israel, the history of 
the Jews, and the production of the Old Testa- 
ment literature. Radical, but reverent and con- 
structive. Follows Kuenen. A most admirable 



1 72 APPENDIX. 

work for Sunday schools and Bible classes. Has 
questions in the back part. 

Koran. Translated by Geo. Sale (English Ed.), 
i2mo, $1.00. With maps and plans, $1.75. 

Kuenen, Dr. A. " The Religion of Israel!' Trans- 
lated from the Dutch. 3 vols. 8vo, net, $9.00. 
Indispensable to a thorough and critical study of 
the religion of the Old Testament. Covers nearly 
the same ground as Ewald ; but is much more 
incisive and condensed, as well as somewhat more 
advanced. 

Legge, Dr. J. " Chinese Classics. Translation of 
Confucius and Mencius." Am. Ed. 8vo, $3.50. 
Eng. Editions of Dr. Legge's works : " Life and 
Teachings of Confucius" \os. 6d. " Life and 
Teachings of Mencius" 12s. " Chinese Classics" 
;£i6. 16s. (Triibner). Highest authority on the 
Sacred Books and Religions of China. 

Manning, Mrs. " Ancient and Medieval India!' 2 
vols. London : Allen & Co., 30^. Perhaps the 
most full and interesting popular account of the 
Vedic religion. 

McClintock and Strong. " Cyclopedia of Biblical, 
Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature" Ar- 
ticle, " Apocrypha" and other articles. Strictly 
orthodox. Scholarly. 

Mills, C. D. B. " Buddha and Buddhism : A Sketch, 



APPENDIX. 



173 



Historical and Critical." 8vo, $1.50. Popular 
and good. 

Muir, John. " Religious and Moral Sentiments from, 
the Sanskrit Writers." i2mo, $1.00. Works, in 
5 vols. London, 8vo, $50.00. Vol. I. " Origin of 
Caste!' Vol. II. " Origin of the Hindus" Vol. 
III. " The Vedas, Opinions on their Origin." 
Vol. IV. " Comparison of Vedic with Later Rep- 
resentations of the Principal Indian Deities" 
Vol. V. " Cosmogony, Mythology, Religious Ideas, 
etc.y in the Vedic Age" Full, scholarly. Very 
valuable. 

Muir, Wm. " Life of Mahomet and History of Islam" 
4 vols. 8vo. (London), 42^. Perhaps the most 
comprehensive, able and fair work on the subject, 
in English. 

Muller, Max, Prof. " Science of Religion ; With 
Papers on Buddhism!' i2mo, $2.00. Four in- 
teresting and valuable popular lectures on Com- 
parative Religion, a paper on Buddhist Nihil- 
ism, and a translation of the Dhammapada or 
" Path of Virtue." " Chips from a German Work- 
shop" i2mo, per vol. $2.50. Vol. I. contains 
admirable lectures and papers on the Vedas, the 
Zend Avesta, Buddhism, the Works of Confucius, 
etc. ; Vol. II. on Comparative Mythology, Greek 
Mythology and Legends, Caste, Folk-Lore, 
etc. " Rig-Veda Sanhita : The Sacred Hymns 



174 APPENDIX. 

of the Brahmans translated and Explained." 
London, 1849 an d l8 73- "^ History of Ancient 
Sanskrit Literature so far as it Illustrates the 
Primitive Religion of the Brahmans." London, 
1859. The last two works scholarly and valua- 
ble, but not so popular as the preceding. 

Noyes, Geo. R. " Translation of the New Testament, 
from the Greek Text of Teschendorf." i2mo, 578 
pp. $1.50. " Translation of the Hebrew Proph- 
ets : " with Introduction upon the Nature of 
Prophecy, etc., and Explanatory Notes. 2 vols. 
12 mo, each $1.25. " Translation of Psalms and 
Proverbs ; " with Introductions upon the date and 
authorship of the books, the nature of Hebrew 
poetry, etc., and Explanatory Notes. 12 mo, 
$1.25. " Translation of yob, Ecclesiastes, and the 
Canticles ;" with Introduction and Notes. 12 
mo, $1.25. These translations and introductions 
are unsurpassed. 

Oort, Dr. H. (assisted by Drs. Hooykaas and Kue- 
nen). " The Bible for Young People." Translated 
from the Dutch. Eng. Ed. 6 vols. i2mo. ; Am. 
Ed. (called " The Bible for Learners") 3 vols. i2mo, 
$6.00. Scholarly, yet charming in style. Covers 
the whole ground of the origin and development of 
the Bible, the history of the Jews, the growth of 
the Hebrew religion, and the origin of Christian- 
ity. For popular use decidedly the most valua- 



APPENDIX. I75 

ble single work. More full than Knappert ; more 
interesting than Keunen ; much less voluminous 
as well as more popular than Ewald ; with the 
advantage of including in its treatment the New 
Testament as well as the Old. 

Parker, Theodore. "Discourse on Religion" G. 
P. Putnam's Sons. i2mo, $1.50. Part IV. is a 
powerful popular statement of difficulties in the 
way of belief in the infallibility of the Bible, and 
an argument to show that true religion needs no 
support of miracle or supernaturalism. 

Renan, Ernest. " The Life of ' yesus ; " " The Apos- 
tles ;" "Saint Pauir Each 12 mo, $1.75. 
Scholarly, yet popular in style. Conclusions not 
always to be trusted, but on the whole very valu- 
able works. 

Savage, M. J. " The Religion of Evolution!' 12 mo, 
$1.50. This volume shows in a very interest- 
ing and comprehensive manner the great new 
light which the doctrine of Evolution is casting 
upon the origin and growth of the religious 
ideas, religious institutions, and sacred books 
of the world. See especially chapters upon " Bi- 
bles and the Bible ; " " Science and Religion ; " 
"Theory of the World ;" "The God of Evolu- 
tion;" "The Man of Evolution;" "The Devil; 
or the Nature of Evil;" and "Christianity and 
Evolution." 



176 APPENDIX. 

Smith, R. Bosworth. "Mohammed and Moham- 
medism" i2mo, $1.50. An interesting popu- 
lar work. Sympathetic in spirit. 

Smith, Dr. Wm. " Dictionary of the Bible!' Ortho- 
dox, scholarly. The unabridged edition far more 
valuable than any of the abridged editions. 

Smith, Prof. W. Robertson. Articles in the Ency- 
clopedia Britannica (Ninth Ed.) on the " Bible," 
and various Bible books and characters. Ortho- 
dox, but thoroughly broad and scholarly. 

Stanley, Dean. " History of the Jewish Churchy 
3 vols. i2mo, $7.50, 8vo, $12.00. In the form 
of popular lectures traces the history and devel- 
opment of the Jewish religion from the patriarchs 
down to the birth of Christianity. Orthodox but 
scholarly, broad, full of valuable religious lessons 
and suggestions. Charming in style as well as 
spirit. u History of the Eastern Church?' i2mo, 
$2.50. This work contains an interesting and 
suggestive lecture on Mohammedanism, in which 
the writer traces its indebtedness to the Bible, 
and its similarities to Oriental Christianity. 

Supernatural Religion. 3 vols. 8vo, $12.00. Anon- 
ymous. A critical examination of the New Tes- 
tament, aiming to test the validity of the Super- 
natural Element in Christianity. Perhaps the 
ablest English work of New Testament criticism 



APPENDIX. 



177 



that has been produced by the rationalistic 
school. 

Tiele, C. P. "A History of Religion, to the Spread of 
the Universal Religions." Translation from the 
Dutch, by J. Estlin Carpenter, 8vo, $2.50. Full 
of the most recent, reliable and condensed infor- 
mation about the growth of the great religions. 
Cites authorities and gives information as to 
the best works on every subject treated. Invalua- 
ble. 

Tylor, E. B. " Primitive Cultured 2 vols., 8vo, 
$7.00. Invaluable in the study of the develop- 
ment of religion among peoples low down in 
civilization. 

Weiss, John. " The Bible and Science!' Pamphlet. 
Free Religious Association, Boston, 10 cts. A 
very keen setting forth of the ridiculousness of 
most of the so-called " reconciliations " of the 
Bible and Science. 

Westcott, B. F. " Introduction to the Study of the 
Gospels!" 12 mo, $3.50. Treats of the origin, 
characteristics, differences in details, difficulties, 
&c, of the Gospels. " The Canon of the New 
Testament!' 12 mo, $3.50. Traces in detail the 
history of the New Testament canon, with opin- 
ions of the more eminent Christian Fathers upon 
the genuineness and value of the various books, 

&c. u History of the English Bible!' i2mo, $3.50. 

12 



178 APPENDIX. 

A detailed account of the more important manu- 
scripts, translations and revisions of the Bible. 
" The Bible in the Churchy i6mo, $1.25.- A 
small work containing a history of the collecting 
of the Bible books, and of opinions about them 
down to the present time, etc. All these works 
are scholarly. Standpoint, orthodox. 

White, Andrew D. " The Warfare of Science" 1 
12 mo, paper, 50 cts. ; cloth, $1.00. Covers (more 
briefly) essentially the same ground as Draper's 
" Conflict Between Religion and Science," Able. 

Whitney, Prof. W. D. — " Oriental and Linguistic 
Studies^ 2 vols, crown 8vo, each $2.50. The 
first vol. contains essays on the Vedas and the 
Avesta> which are particularly valuable. Com- 
pare with Miiller's essays on the same subject, in 
" Chips," vol. i. 

Zeller, Ed. " Acts of the Apostles Critically Ex- 
amined!' To which is prefixed Overbeck's In- 
troduction from De Wette's Handbook. Trans- 
lated from the German. 2 vols. 8vo, $5.25 per vol. 
The most able and exhaustive work on the sub- 
ject that the advanced scholarship of Germany 
has produced. Ranks with Baur s " Paul," and 
Keim's " Jesus of Nazara." 
Of course the above list makes no pretence of 

being exhaustive, or perfect. Possibly many more 

books might be added to advantage ; while, on 



APPENDIX. 179 

the other hand, very likely some might profitably 
be left out. I have included no German, Dutch or 
French books, but such as have been translated into 
our own tongue : and few if any English books but 
such as are to be found in most good libraries, and 
can be obtained from the publishers or through the 
trade. My aim has been to name such books only as 
are most valuable and at the same time most easily 
accessible or obtainable. 



% 



INDEX. 



A. 

Aaron, 121. 

Abijah, 118, 130. 

Abiram, 121. 

Abraham, 46, 47, 130. 139. 

Absurd things in the Bible, 115. 

Acts, book of, authorship, 68. 

'Acts of Solomon,' book of, 79. 

Adam, 28. 

Agag, .King, 46. 

Age begets sacredness, 17. 

Ahab's children murdered by Jehu, 122. 

Ahaz, King, 48. 

Ahaziah, 122. 

Allegorical interpretation of Sacred Books, 

Allen, J. H., 163. 

Alternative of keeping all the Bible or 

throwing all away, 159. 
Amberley, Viscount, 31, 34, 37, 163. 
Amos, 56, 63. 
Analogies between the various sacred books 

of the world. Chap. I. 
Ancestors, worship of, 18. 
'Andrew, the Acts of,' 81. 
Anonymous origin of Sacred Books, 15. 
Anonymous writing common among the 

ancient Jews, 52, 57, 58. 
Antiquity a 'golden age,' 18. 
Apocalypse, 67, 69, 84-87. 
'Apocalypse of Peter,' 84. 
Apocryphal books included in the Roman 

Catholic canon, 80, 85. 
'Apocryphal New Testament,' 163. 

" New Testament literature, 

80, 81. 
Apocryphal Old " " 

80, 82. (See 78, 79.) 
Apocryphal Writings, relation of, to the 

canon, 83-93. 
'Apostolic Constitutions,' 81. 
Arabia, 31. 

(isi) 



Arabs ascribe their proverbs to Lokman, 

61. 
Arabs to-day use Old Testament forms of 

speech, as ' God spake,' etc., 104. 
Arnold, Matthew, 5r, 136, 155, 164. 
Art in Christendom as related to the Bible, 

149. 
Ashtoreth, 46. 
Asoka, King, 93. 
Ass, talking, 116. 
Associations, sacred, which cluster about 

the Bible, 157. 
Assyria, 56, 

Assyrian Sacred Literature, 14. 
Athanasius, 84. 

Atheism never charged upon the Jews, 71. 
Atonement found in heathen religions, 29. 
Authenticity of Scripture books. See 

Genuineness. 
Authority, infallible, needed in morals and 

religion, 143. 
Authors of the New Testament books, 63- 

69. 
Authors of the Old " " 57- 

63, 69. 

B. 

Baal, 122. 

Babylonish Exile, 46, 53, 60-63, 75- 

Babylonian Sacred Literature, 14. 

Baker, Sir Samuel, 104. 

Ballads, heroic, of early peoples, 15. 

Baptism by immersion, 22. 

" of heathen origin, 29. 
Barnabas, Epistle of, 80, 84. 
Baring-Gould, 51, 164. 
Bartholomew, Gospel of, 81. 
Baruch, 85, 86. 
Baur, F. C., 67-69, 99, 164. 
Beatitudes, 145. 
Believing as one chooses or as one must, 

125. 
Beth-Shemish, 117. 



152 



INDEX. 



Bethlehem, 116. 

Bible as revelation, 139. 
" " an inspired book, 137. 
" " the source of religion and morals, 
140. 

Bible as standing on same plane with other 
books, 147. 

Bible as a book of practical moral and re- 
ligious influence, 154. 

Bible as either all true or all false, 159. 

* Bible for Young People.' See Young 

People, Bible for. 
Bible a gold mine, 160. 

" " history of evolution in religion and 

morals, 150. 
Bible indissolubly connected with our civili- 
zation, 149. 
Bible in art, literature, philosophy, etc., 149. 
Bible should be read with rational discrimi- 
nation, 133, 157-161. 
Bible improved as a book of worship by 

giving up theory of infallibility, 129. 
Bible as a book of spiritual consolation and 

quickening, 155. 
Bible a collection of Hebrew literature, 43, 

47, 102, 114, 148. 
Bible does not claim to be infallible, 103. 

" not a unity, 43, 102, 114, 148. 

" real friends and real enemies of, 158. 

" its pre-eminence among the world's 

great Sacred Books, 38, 39, 146. 
Bible, its real value, 147-158. 

" as an English classic, 148. 

" the parent of Monotheism, 153. 

" <v " " Judaism, Christianity, 

and Mohammedanism, 153. 
Bishop who saw the Sun to be triangular, 

125. 
Bixby, James T., quoted, 27. 
Bleek, F., 67, 68, 164, 
Blind, sight restored to, 30. 

* Blood,' doctrine of the, 29. 
' Book-compounding,' 54. 

Books of the Bible, largely compilations, 
51-63- 

Books of the Bible, their relative value, 76. 
" * '* distinct and uncon- 

nected, 43, 102, 114. 

Brahma, 30. 

Brahman Bible, 13, 26, 33, 36, 37, 139. 

Brinton, D. G., 30, 31, 146, 165. 

Britannica Encyclopedia, 52, 53, 54, 67, 83, 
167. 

Brutus, the elder, 49. 

Buddha, 17, 33, 36, 92. _ 

" and Jesus, similarity, 3 c 
" _ immaculately conceived, 30. 

Buddhism, the Five Commandments of , 36. 



Buddhism, the Eight Steps of, 36. 
Buddhist Bible, 13, 17, 26, 37, 139, 
Buddhists, early Christian missionaries 

among, 31. 
Buddhist and Christian canons, analogy 

between, 91. 
Bull-worship among the Hebrews, 46. 
Burnouf. 26. 
Burnt-offerings both required and rejected 

by Jehovah, 73. 

C. 

Csesar Augustus, 116. 

Calvin, 114. 

Calvin regarded certain Scripture books as 

ungenuine, 87. 
Canaan, conquest of, by Joshua, 151. 
Candles, holy, employed in various re- 
ligions, 30. 
Canon, formation of the Buddhist and 

Christian, analogies between, 91. 
Canon, ignorance and credulity of the age 

in which ours was formed, 87. 
Canon of the New Testament, formation 

of, 15-20, 83-93. (See also 63-69.) 
Canon of the Old Testament, formation of, 

15-19, 78, 80, 82. (See also 52-63.) 
Canonization is petrifaction, 21. 
Canticles, 61, 114. 
Canticles, Adam Clarke's and Prof. Noyes* 

estimate of, jj. 
Canticles, an amatory poem without re- 
ligious value, 76-78. 
Captivity, the. See Exile. 
Captivity, influence of upon Judaism and 

Christianity, 75. 
Carlyle, 96. 

Carthage, Council of, 85. 
Celts, 14. 

Chaff and wheat in the Bible, 160. 
Channing, Dr. W. E., 96. 
Chemosh, 46. 
Childhood of Jesus, conflicting accounts of, 

109. 
Children, disobedient, among the Jews 

commanded to be stoned, 123. 
Children, sacrifice of among the early 

Hebrews, 46, 47. 
Child. Mrs. Lydia M., 26, 31, 38, 77» 7 8 > 

165. 
Chinese Sacred Books, 13, 17, 26, 30, 37, 

138, 139. 
Christianity, mythical nimbus surrounding 

its birth, 64-66. 
Christmas an ancient heathen festival, 31. 
Chronicles, 60, 76. 
' Chronicles of the Kings of Judah,' 79. 



INDEX. 



183 



Cicero, 149. 

Circumcision not originally Jewish, 29. 

Civilization in Christendom indissolubiy 

connected with the Bible, 149. 
Clarke, James Freeman, 38, 165* 
Clarke, Dr. Adam, quoted, jj. 
Clement, to the Corinthians, Epistles of, 

80, 
Clodd, Edward, 12, 37, 39, 50, 103, 138, 

165. 
Colenso, Bishop, no, 118, 166. 
Coleridge, H., quoted, 136. 
Coleridge, S. T., quoted, 146. 
Commandments, the Five, of Buddhism, 

33- 
Commandments, the Ten of Judaism, 59, 

7 1 - . 

Compilations — many Bible books are, 51, 
67, 152. 

Composite character of ancient Hebrew 
literature, 51-69, 152. 

Confucius, 13, 17, 31, 34, 35, 37. See 
Chinese Sacred Books. 

Contradictions in the Bible, 107. 

Contradictions in the Bible, attempted re- 
conciliations of the same, 114, 115. 

Conquest of Canaan, 151. 

Conway, Moncure D., 37, 166. 

Copyists, Jewish, license exercised by, 52- 
54, 57 : 

Corinthians, Epistles to, 69, 156. 

Councils, early, of the Church, their char- 
acter, 89-91. 

Councils, the early, their relation to the 
settlement of the Canon, 85-93. 

Cox, G. W., 51. 

Credulity of the age in which the Canon 
was formed, 87. 

Creed-book, the Bible not a, 42. 

Cross as a symbol found in many religions, 

3°' 

Cruelties and injustices sanctioned in the 

Bible, 123, 151. 
Curtis, Prof. T. F-, 100, 106, 107, n8, 166. 
Cyrenius, 116. 

D. 

Daniel, book of, authorship and date, 62. 

Dante, 149. 

Darwin, 28, 29. 

Dates of the different books of the Bible, 

5°, 55-57- 
Dates of the different Sacred Books of the 

world, 56, 57, 152. 
Dathan, 121. 

David, 46, 61, 106, 109, 124, 139. 
David, as a psalm-writer, 6x. 



Davidson, Dr. S., 53, 56, 58, 60, 63, 67, 

83? 85, 89, no, 166. 
Dead, miracle of restoring to life, 30. 
Dead to be raised up, no. 
Descent of Christ into hell, book of, 81. 
Deluge, 28, 117. 
Democritus, 26. 
Denton, Wm., no, 118, 167. 
Deuteronomy, authorship of, 59, 60. 
Development of the Bible, 90, 91. 

" " Hebrew religion, 45- 

48, 1 50-152^ 
Devil, belief in, introduced from Persia, 

75- 
DeWette, 58, 67, 
Discrimination necessary in reading the 

Bible, 133, 158-16 [. 
Distinguishing between inspiration and 

non-inspiration, 143. 
Don Juan, 77. 
Dove, Holy Spirit coming in the form of, 

an ^jr^r^z-Christian idea, 30. 
Draper, J. W., 118, 153, 167. 



Earth, coming destruction of, 108. 

Easter, an ancient heathen festival, 31. 

Ecclesiastes, 61, 74, 114. 

Ecclesiasticus, 85. 

Eddas. 14. 

Edkins, Dr. Joseph, 167. 

Egyptians, 29, 31, 120, 12 1. 

Egyptian Sacred Book, 14. 

Eichhorn, 58. 

Elijah, his ascent into heaven, 109. 

Elohim, 54, 

Elohistic documents in Old Test., 58. 

Emerson, 3, 91. 

England, literature of, 76. 

English Constitution, 152. 

Enemies and friends of the Bible, 15S. 

' Enoch, Prophecy of,' 79. 

Enos, n8' 

Ephesians, Epistle to, 156. 

1 Epistle of Christ to Peter and Paul,' 8r. 

Epistles, authorship of, 68, 69. 

Errors in the Bible — Historical, 116. 
11 " " Scientific, 1 17, 

" " " Contradictions, 107. 

" " " Exaggerations, 118. 

Esther, book of, 55, 60, 86. 

Ethics of the different Sacred Books of 
the world nearly identical, 32-40. 

Etruria, 31. 

Eucharist, of heathen origin, 29. 

Eve created from a rib of Adam, 115. 



184 



INDEX, 



Evolution, as a law of Bible-formation, 

90, 91. 
Evolution of the Hebrew religion, 45-48, 

x 5°- ... 

Evolution and Darwinism 'interpreted into 

the Bible, 28. 
Evolution of morals and religion among the 

Jews, the Bible a history of, 150. 
Ewald, 50, 54, 55» 58, 59, 63, 99, -52> *68. 

" a summary of, given by Allen, 163. 
Exaggeration in Old Testament facts and 

figures, 118. 
Exile of the Jews, 46, 53, 60-63, 75 • 
Explaining away difficulties in Sacred 

Books, 24, 28, 114, 115, 117, 118, 128. 
Exodus, 60. 
Ezra, 53, 82, 106. 

H book of, authorship, 60. 



Farrar, Canon, 168. 

Fathers, the Christian, 105. 

" " what Scripture books they 

thought genuine and authoritative, 84, 85. 

Fictitious perfection ascribed to Sacred 
Books, 20. 

Figurative and forced interpretations of 
Sacred Books, 24-28, 76, 77, 117, 118, 128. 

Fiske, Prof. John, 42, 51. 

Five Books of Moses. See Pentateuch. 

Folly of insisting upon belief in Bible in- 
fallibility, 126. 

Formation of Old and New Testament 
Canons, 82-93. 

Fossilization in religion begins with the 
settlement of its canon, 20-23. 

Friends and enemies of the Bible, 158. 

Frothingham, O. B., 12, 67, 168. 

Funeral pile, 21. 

Future life, origin of Bible doctrine of, 74. 

G. 

Galatians, Epistle to, 69. 
Garibaldi, anecdote about, 28. 
Garrisonian Abolitionists, 28- 
Genealogies of Jesus, irreconcilable, 111. 
Genesis, 59, 60. 

" and Geology, 27, 117, 118, 128. 
Genuineness of the Bible books, 57-69, 

78-82, 84-87. 
Geology and the Bible, 27, 117, 118, 128. 
Germans, 14. 
Gesenius, 62, 100. 
Gibbon, Edward, 169. 
Gladstone, anecdote about, 28. 
God, does he ever tempt men ? 108. 



God, is he ever weary ? 109. 
" seen by men, no. . 
" repenting, no. 
" no respecter of persons, no. 
" progress in conception of, among the 
Jews, 70-74. 

God represented as having a local habita- 
tion and bodily form, 72. 

God, low moral conceptions of, among the 
early Hebrews, 72, 120. 

God both requiring and rejecting burnt- 
offerings, 73. 

God, childish representations of, in Old 
Testament, 119. 

God an infinite devil as well as a God of 
mercy if the Bible is infallible, 130, 151. 

God, where and how does he reveal him- 
self ? 139. 

Gold and quartz in the Bible, 160. 

' Golden Age ' located in the far past, 18. 

Golden Rule of Confucius and Jesus, 34, 

35* ?45- 

Goldziher, Ignaz, 51, 169. 

'Gospel of the Infancy,' 81. 

' Gospel according to the Twelve Apostles,' 

81. 
' Gospel according to the Hebrews,' 8x. 
Gospels, resting on a back-ground of 

legend, 64-67, 83. 
Gospels, date and authorship of, 63-68. 
Greece and Greeks, 44, 45, 48, 56, 139, 147. 

i49» 155- 
Greeks ascribed their proverbs to Pythag 

oras, 61. 
Greeks spiritualizing Homer, 26. 
Greek Sacred Literature, 14. 

" and Hebrew legends, 48. 
Greg, W. R., 71, 106, 107, no, 128, 169. 
Grote, George, 48, 51. 
Growth manifest in the Hebrew religion, 

45-48, 150-152. 
Guides, infallible, in morals and religion, 

are such needed? 143. 

H. 

Haggai, 63. 

Hagiographa, when first regarded as sacred, 

19. 
Hanson, Sir R., no, 170. 
Harmonizing the Bible and Science, 27, 

117, 118, 128. 
Hasmonian Rabbis altering the original 

text, 53- 
Haug, Dr., 57. 
Hebrew people, who and what were they ? 

44. 
Hebrew religion, growth of, 45-48. 



INDEX. 



185 



Hebrew literature, heterogeneous, 47. 
" " composite, 51-65. 

u language imperfect, 98. 
i Hebrews, Epistle to, authorship, 69, 86, 87. 
" ft " its canonicity, 84, 86, 

87. 

Hedge, F. W., 50, 51, 66, 88, 89, 170. 

Hell, origin of the doctrine of, 75. 

Hermas, books of, 81, 84. 

Herod, 117. 

Herodotus, 26. 

Hessian boots, anecdote of, 100. 

Heterogeneous character of Hebrew liter- 
ature, 47. 

Hezekiah, King, 48, 61. 

Hidden meanings of Sacred Scripture, 24, 
2 7j 76, 77) H7) IJ 8) 128, 130. 

Higginson, Edward, 170. 

" T. W., 30, 37, 40, 170. 

Hindoo Sacred Books. See Vedas. 

Hinnom, Valley of, 47. 

Historical mistakes in the Bible, 116. 

Homer, 14, 26, 50, 149, 155. 

Honesty the wisest and safest course in 
dealing with the Bible, 127. 

Hosea, 56, 63. 

Huidekoper, Prof., 153. 

Human sacrifices among the early Jews, 
46, 151. 

Husks and corn, 159. 



Idolatry among the Jews, 46, 71, 151. 
Ignatius, Epistle of, to the Ephesians, 8i. 
Ignorance of the age in which the Bible 

Canon was formed, 87. 
Immaculate Conception, a heathen idea, 

30. 
Immersion and the 'stone knife,' 22. 
Immoral representations of God, 120. 

" teachings in the Old Testament, 

123. 
Immortality, Buddhist teaching of, 33. 
" origin of belief in, among the 

Jews, 74, 151. 
Imprecatory psalms, 124, 129. 
Incarnation, an old heathen idea, 31. 
Indra, 33. 

Infallibility of the Bible, a doctrine of re- 
cent origin, 106. 
Infallibility not claimed by the Bible itself, 

103. 
Infallibility of the Bible, evidence against 

it, 97-130. 
Infallible standard in morals and religion, 

is there need for such? 143. 



Infallibility theory hurts the Bible as a 
book of practical religion, 129. 

Infallibility theory makes God a devil, 131. 
" _ " an enemy to virtue, 132. 

Infallibility theory drives men into infidel- 
ity, 126. 

Infallibility theory something better than, 
127. 

Infidelity, charges of, their frequent ground- 
lessness and folly, 115, 158-161. 

Infidelity often produced by insistence 
upon the doctrine of Bible infallibility, 
126. 

Infidelity of the Jews, 71. 

Inscriptions on the cross, irreconcilable, 
113. 

Inspiration, 104, 137, 154, 155, 156. 

1 ' Jews believed in different de- 

grees of, 19, 20, 53. 

Inspiration not confined to the Bible, 96, 

Inspiration, what is the test of? 143. 
Interpolations in New Testament MSS., 

67, 101. 
Interpolations in various books of the 

Bible by later writers, 52-55, 67, 101. 
Interpretation of the Bible, true method, 

42. 
Interpretation false methods employed in 

connection with the Bible and all other 

sacred books, 24, 27, 76, 77, 117, 118, 128, 

130. 
Irenseus, 84. 
Isaac, 46. 
Isaiah, 33, 48, 53, 61, 63, 77) 127, 139, 148, 

156. 
Isaiah, book of, authorship, 62. 

" * book of, concerning Uzziah,' 79. 



Jahveh, the probably true spelling for 

'Jehovah,' 99. 
James, epistle of, 69, 84, 86. 
' Jasher, book of,' 79. 
Jehovah, true spelling of lost, 99. 
Jehovah as a tribal god of the Hebrew 

people, 71. 
Jehovah, low conception of, among the 

early Jews, 72, 73. 
Jehovah, represented as both delighting in 

and despising burnt offerings, 73. 
Jehovistic document in Old Testament 

58. 

Jehu, 122. 

" ' book of,' 79. 
Jephthah sacrificing his daughter, 46. 
Jeremiah, 46, 53, 61, 63. 



i86 



INDEX. 



Jeremiah, * volume of, burned by Jehudi,' 

T 79 * 

Jeroboam, 118, 129. 

Jerome, 78. 

Jerusalem, destruction of, 63. 

Jesus, 35, 44, 48, 64-66, 70, 76, 82, 116, 

119, T2 7 , 139, 147. 

Jesus the Golden Rule of, 34, 35, 145. 

" his history rests on a back-ground of 

tradition and myth, 64-67. 
Jesus, errors and contradictions in the biog- 
raphies of him, 110-113. 
Jesus, genealogies of, irreconcilable, in, 

112. 
Jesus his pre-eminence among the world's 

great religious teachers, 70, 139, 147. 
Jews, their great influence in the world, 

i53. 
Jezreel, 122. x 
Job, 28, 33, 54, 77i 148. 
Job, book of, authorship, 60. 
John, 70, 114. 
John, ' the Acts of,' 81. 

" Gospel of, 67, 156. 

" Epistles of, 69, 84. 
Johnson, Samuel, 37, 40, 171. 
Jonah, 116, 130. 
Joram, King, 122. 

' Joseph of Arimathea, narrative of,' 81. 
" the husband of Mary, 116, 117. 
Joshua, 117, 121, 151. 

li book of, 60, 76. 
Josiah, 55, 60. 

Jowett, Prof. B., quoted, 25, 
Judaism the mother of Christianity and 

Mohammedanism, 153. 
Jude, epistle of 69, 84, 86. 
Judges, book of, 60, 76. 
Judith, 85, 86. 
Juno, immaculate conception of 30. 

K. 
Kalisch, Dr., 47. 
Keim, Dr. T., 68, 99, 171. 
King James' translation of the Bible a 

classic, 148. 
Kings, books of, 60, 76. 
Knappert, 55, 62, 63, 75, 171. 
Knife of stone used by priests, 21. 
Korah, 121. 
Koran, 13, 17, 35, 36-37, 57» I22 > 138, 153, 

i.7i- 
Krishna, immaculately conceived, 50. 



Lamech, 118. 

Lamentations, authorship of, 61. 



Language, Hebrew, very imperfect, 98. 

Laodicea, Council of, 85. 

Laou-tsze, 13, 35, 37. 

* Laus Veneris,' jj. 

1 Law, The,' earliest part of the Old Test, 
to become Sacred, 19. 

' Learners, Bible for.' See f Young Peo- 
ple, Bible for.' 

Lecky, W. E. H., 89, 90. 

Legendary element in the Old Testament, 
48-51. 

Legendary, back-ground to the Gospels, 
64-67. 

Legendary, origin of many Sacred Books, 

Legends, Greek and Hebrew, 48-51. 

il sometimes more valuable than 
history, 50, 5r, 116. 

Legge, Dr., 26, 172. 

Letourneau, quoted, 35. 

Leviticus, authorship of, 60. 

License exercised by copyists of the Scrip- 
tures, 52-55, 67, 101. 

Literary value of the Bible, 148. 

Literature of the Hebrews, miscellaneous 
and unconnected, 43,47, 102, 114. 

Literature of the Hebrews composite, 5 1-55. 
" of the Hebrews of uncertain date, 
.5°~57* CSV* also pp. 57-69). 

Liturgies common to various religions, 30. 

Logos, this not only the designation of 
Jesus but also of Buddha, 31. 

Lokman, 61. 

Luke's Gospel, 12, 66, 156. 

Luther's view of the canonicity of certain 
Scripture books, 86. 

M. 

Macaulay, T. B., 51. 

Maccabees, 60, 63, 85, 86. 

Madonna and child in Pagan art, 3 1. 

Mahomet, 17. 

Manasseh, King, 48, 55. 

1 Manner of the Kingdom, book of,' 79. 

Manning, Mrs., 172- 

Mark's Gospel, origin of, 66. 

Mars, the Greek god, immaculately con- 
ceived, 30. 

Martineau, Russell, 99. 

Mary, the mother of Jesus, 116. 

Mathew's Gospel, origin of, 65. 

Meat, tainted, commanded to be sold to 
aliens, 124. 

Memories, sacred, that cluster about the 
Bible, 157. 

Messiah, did Jesus claim to be? no. 

Messiahs, Hindoo and Chinese, 30, 31. 



INDEX. 



187 



Methuselah, 118. 

Micha, prophecy of, 46, 56. 

Michal, the daughter of Saul, 109. 

Milcom, 46. 

Miller, Joaquin, 114. 

Mills, C. D. B-, 172. 

Milman, Rev. H. H., quoted, 90., 

Miracles common to many religions, 29, 
3o> 31. 

Miriam, song of, 59. 

Missing Old Testament books, 78. 

Missionaries, Christian, first that went 
among the Buddhists, 31. 

Mistakes, historical, in the Bible, 116. 

Mohammedan Bible. See Koran. 

Mohammedanism an own sister of Chris- 
tianity, 153. _ 

Molech, worship of, 46, 47. 

Monasticism common to several religions, 

3 °* 
Monotheism among the Jews a growth, 

45) 7* • 

Monotheistic religions, the, of the world, 
our Bible the parent of, 153. 

Moody and his doctrine of ' the Blood,' 
29. 

Morality prior to and independent of 
Bibles, 140- 

Morally low conceptions and representa- 
tions of God found in the Old Testa- 
ment, 72, 120, 131. 

Mosaics, the Gospels as, 65. 

Moses, 28, 59, 71, ri9, 120, 121, 139. 

Moses, the Five Books of, 19, 53, 55, 58, 
59, 150- 

Muir, John, 26, 172. 

Muir William, 173. 

Muller Max, 14, 25, 32, 33, 34, 37, 42, 50, 
57, 92, 173. 

Murray John, 114. 

Mythical element in the Gospels, 15, 64-66. 

Mythical element in the Old Testament, 
*5> 48-51, *i6. 

N 

Napoleon, 119. 

' Nathan, Ahijah and Iddo, books of,' 79. 

' Nathan and Gad, books of,' 79. 

* Nativity of St. Mary, Gospel of,' 81. 

Natural Selection as a law in Bible-forma- 
tion, 16, 90. 

Nebuchadnezzar, 62, 116. 

Nehemiah, authorship of, 60. 

Neptunian theory, 26. 

New Testament Apocrypha, 80, 81. 

New Testament text, 100,000 variations in, 
101. 



Niebuhr, 49. 

Niagara, 147. 

Norton, Prof. Andrews, quoted, 10 1. 

Novalis, 145. 

Noyes, Prof. G. R., 61, 77, 78, 173. 

Numbers, authorship of, 60. 

O. 

Odin, 61. 

Old Testament Apocrypha, 78-81. 

" " Canon, formation of, 82. 

" " books that are missing, 78. 

Oort, Dr., 45, 47, 65, 96, 174. 
Oral tradition preceding the Gospels, 64, 

65, 83. 
Origen, 84, 105. 
1 Origins, Book of,' 58- 
Osiris and Jesus, similarity between, 31. 

P. 

Parker, Theodore, 26, 174. 

Parsees, Sacred Book of. See Zend Avesta. 

Paul, 48, 70, 109, 113, 127, 139, J45- 
" his writings, 68, 69, 86, 87, 136. 
" conflicting accounts of his conversion, 
109. 

Pentateuch, author and date of, 19, 53, 58- 
60. 

Perfumery, divine receipe for making, 119. 

Persia and the Persians, 31, 43, 56, 60, 75. 

Persian Bible. See Zend Avesta. 

Peter, St., quoted, 40. 

" Epistles of, 69, 84, 87. 

Pharaoh, 120. 

Philo, 26. 

Phoenicia, 56. 

' Pilate, Acts of,' 81. 

Pilgrims found under many religions, 30. 

Pindar, 148. 

Plague among the Children of Israel stop- 
ped by prayers of Moses and Aaron, 121. 

Plato, 26, 149. 

Polytheism among the Jews, 45, 71, 151. 

Priests found in connection with almost all 
religions, 30. 

Progress manifest in the Hebrew religion, 
45, 70, 75. 150-152., 

Progress of the Jews in their conception of 
God, 70-74. 

Prophets, 39, 138, 155. 

' Prophets, The,' when first regarded as 
sacred, 19. 

Prophecies, authorship of, 62, 63. 

Prophecies, similar, found in various 
Sacred Books, 30. 

Protestants have no authoritative Scrip- 
ture Canon, 85, 86. 



188 



INDEX. 



Proverbs, authorship of, 61. 
Psalms, 33, 54, 148, 156. 
Psalms, authorship of, 6o« 
Psalms, imprecatory, 124. 
Pseudepigraphal (or doubtful) New Tes- 
tament books, 80, 81. 
Pythagoras, 61. 

Q. 

Quirinus. See Cyrenius. 
R. 

Rational Scholarship, relation of to reli- 
gion, 128. 
Reading between the lines in Sacred Books, 

24, 27, 76, 77, 117, 118, 128, 130. 
Readings, various in N. T. text, 67, 101. 
Reconciling Science and Scripture, 24, 27, 

76, 117, 118, 128, 130. 
Reformation in Germany, 85. 
Religion a progressive thing until it gets a 

Sacred Book, or forms a canon, 20. 
Religion larger than any Sacred Book, 39. 
" injured by theory of an infallible 

Bible, 129. 
Religion as the producer of Sacred Books, 

140. 
Religion, origin and foundation of, 142. 
Religion, the Bible as a practical book of, 

i54> i55- 
Religion indestructible, 42. 

*' and Science, 27, 117, 118, 128, 

130. 
Religious Evolution, the Bible a history 

of, 150. 
Renan, Ernest, 175. 

Repenting, God represented as, 70, no. 
Revelation, is it confined to the Bible ? 139. 
Revelation, the, of St. John. See Apoc- 
alypse. 
Righteousness the central word of the 

Bible, 154. 
Rig Veda. See Vedas. 
Robertson, F. W., quoted, 96. 
Roman Catholic Bible, 106. 
Roman Catholic canon includes O. T. 

Apocrypha, 80, 85. 
Roman history, early, legendary, 49. 
Rome and the Romans, 31, 44, 45, 56, 76, 

i39, i49- 
Romans, Epistle to the, 69, 114, 148, 156. 
Romulus and Remus, 49. 

S. 

Sacraments found in other religions, 29. 
Sacred Books an ultimatum, 20. 



Sacred Books of mankind, principal ones 
named, 13. 

Sacred Books which originate anony- 
mously, 15. 

Sacred Book which originate in a man, 16. 

Sacred Books tolerate no rivals, 23. 

Sacredness comes from age, 17. 

Sacrifices, both required and rejected by 
Jehovah, 73. 

Sacrifice of human victims, 46, 151. 

Sacrificial ideas common to various reli- 
gions, 29. 

Sakya-muni. See Buddha. 

Samuel, books of, authorship, 60. 

Samuel the prophet, 46, 151. 

Samson, 129. 

Saturninus, Quintus Sentius, 117. 

Saul, 46, 151. 

Savage, M. J., 175. 

Savior, an appellation given to Buddha, 31. 

Saxons, 31. 

Scandinavians, 14. 

Science, reconciliation with Scripture, 27, 
117, 118, 128, 130. 

Scientific errors in the Bible, 1x7. 

Scripture and Inspiration, 138. 

Scripture and Science, 27, 1x7, 128. 

Scripture, forced interpretations of, 24, 76, 

77- . . 

Sects and Sectarianism, one cause of, 114. 

Sennacherib's invasion of Judah, 62. 

Seraiah, book of, 79. 

Sermon on the Mount, 156. 

Serpent, talking, 115. 

Seventh Commandment broken by Divine 
injunction, 124. 

Shakspeare, 147, 148, 155. 

' Shepherd of Hermas,' regarded as Scrip- 
ture, 84. 

Shrines at Dan and Bethel, for idol-wor- 
ship, 46. 

Similarities in teachings of various Sacred 
Books of the world (in superficial things), 
28, (in deeper things) 32. 

Sin, is any human being free from? 109. 

Sinaitic MS., 89. 

Sirach, 84, 86._ 

Six infallibilities? 102, 114. 

Slaves, 14. 

Slavery and the Bible, 22, 124. 

Smith, G. Vance, quoted, 42. 
" R. Bosworth, 175. 
" Wm., 175. 
" W. Robertson, 52, 53, 54, 67, 175. 

Solomon, 61. 

Solomon's Parables, Songs, etc., book of, 
79- 

Song of Solomon. See Canticles. 



INDEX. 



189 



Songs of early nations and peoples, 15. 

Sophocles, 148. 

Soul, doctrine of immortality of, makes its 
appearance, 74. 

Spinoza. 146. 

Spiritual interpretation of Sacred Books, 
24-28, 76, 77. 

Spiritual teachings and influence of the 
Bible, 155. 

Spiritual teachings of various Sacred 
Books similar, 32. 

Spurious Old and New Testament books, 
78-81. 

Standards for all time, Sacred Books as, 
20-23. 

Standards in Religion — are infallible need- 
ed ? 20-23, 143- 

Stanley, Dean, 74, 118, 176. 

Steps, the Eight, of Buddhism, 36. 

Stone Knife, the, 21. 

Suttee, the rite of, 123. 

Survival of the fittest, as a law of Bible- 
formation, 50, 90. 

Swing, Prof. David, quoted, 136, 143. 

Symbols common to various religions, 30, 
3i. 

Synagogue, the Great, 53, 106. 

Syriac version of the Bible, 105- 



Tarquin, 49. 

Tayler, J. J., quoted, 3. 

Temple, Dr., 3, 91. 

Temptation, does it ever come from God ? 
108. 

Tertullian, 84. 

Text, original Hebrew and Greek corrupt- 
ed, 52-55, 67, 101. 

Theodoret, 105. 

Thibet, 31. 

Tiele, Dr., 33, 176. 

Time brings sacredness, 17. 

Tischendorf, 86. 

Tobit, 84, 85, 86. 

Tophet, Valley of, sacrifices offered there, 
47* 48. 

Tradition, early Hebrew, 48. 

" oral preceding the Gospels, 64, 
65, 83. 

Tradition. See Legend. 

Transcribers of Bible, license exercised by, 

5 2- 55> 6 7» IQI ' 

Translation of the Bible, King James', 
148. 

Translators of the Bible, were they infal- 
lible? ior. 

Transmission of the sacred records, has it 
been infallible ? 97. 



Trent, Council of, which settled the Rom- 
ish Canon, 85. 

Trinity, strongest proof-text of, an inter- 
polation, 101. 

Tripitaka. See Buddhist Bible. 

Truth always safe, 127-133. 

Tubingen School, its view of the origin of 
the New Testament, 67, 68. 

Tyler, E. B., 31, 51, i77- 
U. 

Uriah the Hittite, 107. 
V. 

Vedas, 13, 19, 25, 26, 32, 33, 34, 57, "3, 
138. 

Virgil, 149. 

Virgin-born gods, a heathen idea, 30. 

Virgin-mothers, a heathen idea, 30. 

Virtue, what is the source and sanction of ? 
142. 

Voices speaking from Heaven, 30, 104. 

Vulcanian theory, 26. 

Vulgate, 105. 

W. 

Wars, barbarity of many recorded in the 
Old Testament, 151. 

' Wars of the Lord, Book of,' 79. 

Weiss, John, 28, 118, 177. 

Westcott, B. F., 83, 177. 

White, Andrew D., 118, 177. 

Whitney, Prof. W. D., 57, 178. 

Whittier, 40, 114, 156. 

4 Wisdom, The Book of,' 85, 86. 

Witches, command of Moses to put to 
death, 123. 

' Words of the Seers,' 79. 

Wordsworth, 148. 

Writers of the Old Testament, 47, 57-63, 
114. 

Writers of the New Testament, 63-69, 114. 

Wrong actions commended and taught in 
the Old Testament, 123, 151. 

Y. 

* Young People, Bible for,' 45, 47, 65, 66, 

174. 

Z. 
Zacharias, 117. 

Zechariah, book of, authorship, 63. 
Zeller, Dr. Ed., 68, 69, 99, 179. 
Zend Avesta, 13, 19, 26, 36, 37, 43, 57, 138, 

i39- 
Zoroaster, immaculately conceived, 30, 31. 
Zoroastrianism, its influence upon Juda- 
ism and Christianity, 75. 
Zwingli rejected the Apocalypse, 86. 



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44 A work that will command the interest of the philanthropist and the social re- 
former, aud deserves the attention of every citizen and taxpayer. — N. Y. Tribune. 

JERVIS (John B.) Labor and Capital. A complete and compre- 
hensive treatise by the veteran engineer, whose experience of more than 
half a century has given him exceptional opportunities for arriving at a 
practical understanding of the questions now at issue between employers 
and employed. i2mo, cloth • $125 

LINDERMAN (Henry R., Director of the United States Mint) 
Money and Legal Tender in the United States. 12 mo, 
cloth ............ 1 25 



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